


Fate is an Architect

by DarlingOfDathomir



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jedi Ben Solo, Knights of Ren - Freeform, Kylo Ren Backstory, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Sex, Slow Burn, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2019-10-02 19:08:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17269415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlingOfDathomir/pseuds/DarlingOfDathomir
Summary: There's the pure, good brightness of light- and the evil, corrupt sickness of the dark. That's the only two brushes they seem to use when painting a picture of a villain. It's easier that way.The story of Kylo Ren's descent into darkness and the Knights that followed him wasn't as black and white as the galaxy wanted it to be. There was goodness. There was suffering. Hearts were broken and dynasties were laid to ruin. There was betrayal, flames, torture, and death; but through it all there was one unbreakable bond that only death could sever.Dying, it turns out, isn't black and white either.





	1. Light as a Stone

**Author's Note:**

> This is an indulgent story that means a lot to me, and I hope that you enjoy it at least a smidge as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I really see a tragic character in Ben/Kylo, and I hope I can do justice to a character development I see as incredibly complex.
> 
> There's eventual romance, but it's more than just smut or fluff. I'm aiming to update at least once a month tbh, hopefully more. I have most of it written out, I just re-read and re-edit the hell out of things lol
> 
> ***Also at the beginning of this story, Ben is like 19/20, to go along with the timeline of canon events***
> 
> ***Tags will be updated as the story progresses***

“I know it’s frustrating, Ben, but it’s supposed to be.”  
  
A young Ben Solo stood blindfolded on the white stone plaza that overlooked the ancient forest behind the temple. Ten small spherical droids whizzed around him in the air intermittently shooting tiny bolts of electricity. Every time he deflected one it seemed like five more would appear right after without giving him a second to recover; victory felt impossible.  
  
“You need to fight that irritation and center yourself. Focus simply on the task at hand, not how it makes you feel.”  
  
The way Luke constantly addressed the mounting anger in his chest only served to pressurize it that much more. He tried so hard to still his mind, to feel nothing at the constant barrage of little sparks, but it felt like he was merely ignoring the growing fury rather than truly conquering it.  
  
“Let the force guide you”

*zap*  
  
“Empty your mind.”  
  
*zap zap*  
  
“Be patient with yourself.”  
  
*zapzapzapzapzap*  
  
Ben froze for what felt like an eternity but was no longer than a fraction of a second. He could feel that tip of the scales inside him, the bubbling up of overwhelming emotions. He knew he _shouldn’t_ , but he couldn’t help himself; that’s how it always went. That brief moment of clarity where he knew _exactly_ what he was going to do and _exactly_ how terrible of a choice it was… but it never held him back.  He brought one leg back and dug his heel in before crouching low and bringing his saber up in a brilliant blue arc.  
  
With a roar he sliced one of the droids right through the middle. The power of his frustration rippled like a shockwave through the force, sending the remaining droids careening off into the distance to get stuck in bushes and smash against the back wall of the temple.  He ripped his blindfold off, chest heaving, still lost in that explosion of anger. He turned around to see the force had knocked Luke backward too, and his master was scrambling to his feet to storm over.  
  
And, just like every other time he had an outburst, his flash of fury was instantly followed by regret.  
  
“I’m, I’m sorry I didn’t mean-”  
  
“That’s the third time, the _third time_ this week that you’ve failed this exercise, though the other two weren’t as bad. You gave in to your anger and that will lead you right into the darkness, you know that!”  
  
“It wasn’t ‘darkness’ I just, I just-” he stuttered to explain but Luke was having none of it.  
  
“One day it might not be droids, Ben. One day it could be friends, family, innocent lives that are hurt because you can’t control yourself. Great power comes with great responsibility, and like it or not you have a _lot_ of power to be responsible for. Do you understand? Do you see why this is so important?”  
  
He looked down, embarrassed. “Yes, Uncle Luke, I’m sorry, I’ll try harder next time.”  
  
Luke put a hand on the young man’s shoulder, feeling that perhaps he’d been a little too hard on him.

“You’re still wound up, I can feel it. Sit here and meditate until you’ve calmed down. Once you do, I want you to focus on how that peace feels, okay? Think of five thoughts that are calming, and come to me later to tell me what they are. We’ll work on using them in the future.”

  
Ben sat down and crossed his legs, squeezing his eyes shut and doing his best to calm down. The anger he’d felt at the constant little zaps was now re-directed at himself for yet another failure. Feeling like a disappointment made it even harder to center his attention and quell the frustration.  
  
“He’s harder on you than the others, you know.”  
  
Ben opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder to the voice breaking his concentration.  A fairly new student at the temple was stepping out of the bushes that edged the stone circle, her bright blonde hair seeming to glow gold against the dark green leaves.  
  
“It’s not really fair, is it? How he singles you out?”  
  
He stared in silence, unsure of how to reply to the criticism of their teacher. She walked over to where he sat and stood over him, the sun at her back casting them both in shadow.  
  
“I haven’t formally met you yet. I’m Shara Oshin.”  
  
“The senator's daughter?” her overly crisp Eriaduan accent made sense. The style of speech was a hold-over from the old Imperials, and her father was known to be one of their loudest supporters, quickly backtracking once the Empire fell. It was one of the many things his mother hated about the man.   
  
“Yes, I believe our parents are friends.” She sat down across from him, almost too close for his comfort.  
  
Ben snorted at the thought but started backpedaling when the expression on her face remained serious. His mother routinely referred to Karran Oshin as ‘that pompous manpig’ or ‘the borra of Bakura’  during conference calls with her inner circle. “Oh, I didn’t mean, um, yes they might be.”  
  
The girl laughed, “It’s no secret that Senator Organa doesn’t like my father. He swears that she does, that it’s why Luke accepted me so late, as a favor.”  
  
“That’s why I haven’t seen you then, you’re with the younger padawans?”  
  
She looked down and started fiddling with the hem on her robes, a hint of defensiveness in her voice. “Only for now. Luke says I’m picking things up quickly but that I need to learn patience, too.”  
  
“You don’t sound happy about that.”  
  
Bright blue eyes shot up to meet his. “No. I think it’s stupid. The faster I learn things the better. I’ve been trying as hard as I can but he keeps holding me back. If I can do the exercises it’s ridiculous  to make me keep repeating them.”  
  
“Master Luke does everything for a reason, and even if we can’t see the sense in it yet it’s important to listen.”  
  
She huffed, “I suppose you’re right. So, what’s the reason he’s had you dance with the droids three times then? You managed to destroy all of them, isn’t that the point?”  
  
“It’s, well... no, it’s not just about taking out the droids. It’s how I do it that’s wrong. That’s what I’m supposed to be meditating on now, actually, and I sorta need to get back to it.” He didn’t really want to go into the depths of his conversations with Luke, embarrassed to admit that the streak of darkness inside was what his uncle truly worried about.  
  
“I’ll meditate with you then.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, hands clasped together in her lap.  
  
It wasn’t an invitation, but he couldn’t think of a nice way to tell her to go away. He sighed and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the strange girl in his personal space. Eventually, though, his mind wandered, drifting through the happier memories as Luke had instructed. He couldn’t truly find enjoyment in them, though. It seemed like every good moment had a negative counterpart poised to immediately rob any happiness from it.  
  
The first memory that surfaced was the time Han actually showed up (and on time) for his 12th birthday…  but he ended up leaving early because he got in an argument with his mother. Or when he was even younger and they visited Kashyyk- he was thrilled to get to stay in a literal tree house, but in those close quarters he overheard his own parents worrying that he would ‘grow into a monster’, mirroring the same accusations whispered in his nightmares... the memory of which brought him back to the large aquarium they had at the condo on Bespin; he always wondered if that was the initial incident that set off his parent’s distrust of their own son.  
  
Their aquarium was filled with a myriad of brightly colored fish that glittered like gemstones in the water. He’d fallen asleep on the couch watching a spooky holovid (which he was told not to watch, but just like his father, an unsupervised Ben didn’t always follow the rules). The scary themes only served to make the bad dreams he was accustomed to even worse. He snapped awake and cried out when he woke, his fear crackling through the force and shattering the tank. There were so many little fishes flopping about amongst the shards of glass and bits of debris- he lept up frantically trying to save them.  
  
Leia ran into the living room at the sound, and between him desperately trying to scoop up the fish while insisting it wasn’t his fault and her yelling and asking what he’d done he was overwhelmed.  
  
_“I didn’t do anything!!!”_ he’d shouted at her; the sentence punctuated by a sharp cracking sound as a split ran through the marble coffee table behind him.  
  
“Just, just go to your room!”  
  
He ran with tears sliding down his cheeks, clutching three writhing fish to his chest. He dropped them into the glass of water by his nightstand, grateful he’d saved at least some of them. When he woke in the morning, though, they were dead.  
  
Ben jumped, brought back to reality by the feeling of a soft hand on his.  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
“I just, um” he swallowed back the lump in his throat, coughing to clear his voice before continuing. “Maybe you’re right. This is stupid.”  
  
“Good.” She lept up and extended a hand down to help him to his feet. “We have time to make it to the river and back before it gets dark if you want to skip rocks or something. I was the best back home.”  
  
“I don’t know what 'skipping rocks' is, I’ve never heard of it.”  
  
“Perfect, then you get to learn from the best, let’s go.” She looped her arm in his and drug him towards the stairs that lead to the wilderness below, going on about ‘primo rocks’ and aerodynamics; nothing that sounded remotely to do with ‘skipping.’ It appeared that she was his friend now, whether he wanted her to be or not.  
  
As they walked and she continued on talking, he began to appreciate how differently she treated him than the others… like he was _normal_. Perhaps part of it was that she too was the child of a senator and his parents didn’t impress her at all; even his relationship to Luke was shrugged off. Most of the other students were starstruck in his presence, and he hated it. That, and they were always asking if this story or that story about his dad was true, if the Falcon really _was_ as fast as they’d heard, etc. Maybe this was someone who would actually like _him_ instead of obsessing over where he came _from_ … maybe she was even someone to which he would want to be a friend in return.  
  
It was dusk when they returned to the temple and Luke was standing at the top of the stairs, arms crossed but a bit of a smile on his face.  
  
“Impressive. I’ve never seen someone meditate so hard that they sent themselves flying out into the woods.”  
  
“I taught him how to skip rocks. It takes a lot of _patience_ to learn, doesn’t it.” She nudged Ben with a smirk.  
  
“I see. Shara, you go on. Ben, tell me you at least spent a little time on what we discussed.”  
  
“I did.” He proceeded to list off the good half of what he’d thought of earlier, and decided to add skipping rocks to the list.  
  
  
  
That was the way he preferred to remember her, that first day they spent together at the river. The slight pink of sunburn across high cheekbones, two long blonde braids down to her lower back that would swing as she tried to show him the perfect throwing angle, and eyes so blue they made the river look gray. The only taint to that memory was that good things never seemed to last, and it was a reminder that the galaxy saw fit to take away anything good Ben Solo ever had. It didn’t matter anymore, though. Now he was Kylo Ren, and he could take whatever he desired;  the only things that kept him from what he wanted now were time and the grave… and the grave had Shara now.  
  
He was the one that put her there.  
  
“Supreme Leader? Have you made your decision? I need your approval to seize those mines and if that ore is acceptable we can have forces on the ground by next cycle.”  
  
Captain Drasgan was the head of… something to do with construction materials, Kylo couldn’t remember at the moment… the Department of Planetary Resource Acquisitions or some other overly long name Hux invented. He needed permission to begin mining on a moon in the Otomok system, and he’d brought a sample of the ore back for inspection as if the force would somehow allow him to read its purity. A sample belonged in the lab, not on the desk of the Supreme Leader.  
  
He arched an eyebrow and took it from him, noting the smooth surface and triangular shape of the thin sample. _Perfect for skipping._ He floated into the air above his open palm, spinning it hypnotically as his mind drifted back to the lazy river on Dynera. The Captain’s voice pulled him back to the present, and he snatched the stone from the air.    
  
“Do it.”  
-  
  
He hadn’t thought of her in quite some time. Discovering Rey, killing his father, the death of Snoke, his ascension to the throne (and keeping it) and now hunting the Resistance had left little time to reminisce on the ghost that usually haunted the back of his mind. The hurricane of events that unfolded in the recent months left him constantly assessing new problems that seemed to surround on all sides. And just like those training droids back at the academy, whenever _one_ was solved, more arrived to take its place. He sighed and slowly spun his chair around to stare out at the stars.  
  
Kylo decided to forgo Snoke’s dramatic throne rooms, and instead had his meeting room placed in the lower levels of this ship… specifically on the same floor as the interrogation chambers. It was a long, narrow room with an elevated platform at the end where he sat behind a rounded desk fitted with multiple computer panels to assist in keeping track of everything. He found the very personal atmosphere more intimidating than grandiose thrones and spectacles.  
  
It made the point that _he_ was the most threatening thing in the room, and no flare was needed to get _that_ across. Shara would have been the exact opposite, and he could almost hear her voice chiding him for working in  “quite the scary broom closet”.  
  
  
  
His mother was never one for frills, but coming from Bakura, his friend had been raised in garish opulence.  He had never seen that side of her, though, as Jedi were supposed to eschew luxuries in life and the academy was run as such. They all dressed in similar earth-toned robes, stayed in simple living quarters, and ate food for sustenance over enjoyment. He’d never forget the first time he saw her dressed like the senator’s daughter that she was... and it wasn’t just because of how striking he found her. That was night was when he could first pinpoint what he referred to as ‘the shift’... when everything began to change.  
  
At the end of every Galactic Standard Year parties across the galaxy were thrown to celebrate its' end and the new year ahead. Those that wished to could leave the academy briefly to spend time with their families. Shara & Ben were both summoned by their parents to attend the large gala thrown for the Senate and other important players in intergalactic politics.  Ben was grateful that his mother took more after Alderaanian tradition than that of the elaborately adorned Naboo. They both wore understated robes in different cuts but matching tones of deep blue cotton with a light grey woven sash.  
  
The ballroom was enormous and crowded with some of the most influential people in the galaxy. Despite the bustling activity, long tables covered with exotic foods, and a band made up of the best musicians that could be found- he was bored. Every year he attended the gala with his mother and every year he trailed behind her, answering the same questions over and over again with every new sentient that came up to talk. He felt like he was more of an accessory than a human being as they made their rounds.  A glimmer of red caught his eye and he looked across the room to see Shara walking down the stairs from one of the balconies, a shimmering crimson dress seeming to be made more of gemstones than any real fabric. She followed behind her portly father and a handful of his equally unpleasant friends.  
  
They walked to a small group of people tucked away in the far corner, chatting amongst themselves and only pausing to cast a judgmental eye across the crowd before leaning in and whispering. Most of them were known to have supported the Empire, though many (like her father) had dodged retribution through the duplicitous natures of their businesses. One of his shell companies had supplied a majority of the repulsor coils for the second Death Star, but with a lack of proof (assuredly bribery) he and all his riches evaded any real repercussions.

Baela Teshik, the granddaughter of an Imperial Grand Admiral, was all angles and anger as she waved her hands irritatedly. The waspish woman was snarling about something to the group- which earned a very noticeable turn of heads to glare across the room in his mother’s direction.

  
Leia was deep in conversation with Min Dosha, the newly elected senator of  Timrin- a major shipping port for Bakura. His first act upon taking office was ‘cleaning house’ and getting rid of crooked Port Officials to ensure that _everyone_ paid proper shipping fees and _everyone_ had proper inspections. Ben eavesdropped briefly, and it seemed that forged manifests had been a huge issue, with many ships actually going to the outer rim. It was a strange thing to lie about, which made it that much more intriguing. After a few “excursions” with his father, he knew it was more common to lie about where you were coming _from_ rather than where you were going _to_. The ‘wrong’ point of origin could lead to far too many questions and far too thorough inspections.  
  
Leia turned and put a hand on her son’s arm, “And that’s why you really ought to steer clear of his daughter. That sneaky son of a sarlacc and his friends have been getting increasingly secretive as of late.” As if on cue, Shara waved at him excitedly from across the room, and despite an elbow in his side he waved back.  
  
“She doesn’t even really like her own father to be honest, she’s nothing like him. She’s actually one of my closer friends at the Academy.” _My only friend, really._  He thought.  
  
“Oh Ben…  her father probably told her to seek you out. There’s a nasty underside to politics, and I hate that it’s managed to find you even out there.”  
  
He pulled his shoulder away, “Is it really that hard to believe that someone might like me?”  
  
“No sweetheart, that’s not what I meant, I just… look, just think about it, okay? It’ll start to make sense.” and with that she turned back to Min Dosha “I’m glad he only has the one child, maybe my brother can manage some damage control. I thought he might at least start being more amicable since I got Luke to take her, but all it’s done is inflate is his ego.”  
  
_So it was a favor._ It’d crush her if she knew. But then, what if his mother was right and what if she knew all along? What if this was some strange drawn-out power play of her family against his? Ben chewed his bottom lip, mind replaying their interactions. When he looked back across the dance floor her father was ushering her out of the room, leant down and speaking into her ear.  
  
_No… it can’t be._ His heart sunk at the thought of his best friendship being nothing more than a ruse. The sadness was quickly replaced with anger, and he marched off to demand answers.  
  
  
Senator Oshin had dipped into one of the dark staff hallways to chide his daughter.  
  
“Shara dearest I don’t care what you do on that dusty planet, but while you’re here with me you won’t so much as _look_ at Organa’s son, understood? It’s caused enough upset with some of my business partners that I’ve even let you go off to that cult at all.”  
  
“I thought you liked her? Or at least wanted her to like you?” She rolled her eyes and laughed, “I can’t keep track anymore.”  
  
“Things are changing quickly, dear, soon Republic sympathizers will be very much on the out, mark my words.”  
  
“Well who is ‘in’ or ‘out’ is irrelevant to me.”  
  
He stopped, pointing a finger in her face. “Don’t be insolent, what’s happening now is far too important, I have high stakes tied up in this.”  
  
“He’s _my_ friend, I don’t see how that has anything to do with you.”  
  
“Hopefully this time next year you’ll be joining me in the Outer Rim, and I don’t want us arriving with a mark to our name because of your childish indulgences.”  
  
At that she stepped away from him. “What are you talking about? Why would I leave my training?”  
  
“There’s someone… I haven’t met him, but he’s very powerful, very influential with some of the, ah, business partners I’ve been discussing. He’s interested in people with your talents. You could do _very_ well under the new order he’s proposing.”  
  
“Were you even going to ask me if I wanted to go? What was your plan, to just take me away? I will go _where_ I see fit and speak with _who_ I see fit and as far as I’m concerned your kriffing ‘business partners’ can-”  
  
Her tirade was cut short as he backhanded her across the face. She reacted without thinking, hand clawing out and throwing him into the wall behind him. Stubby fingers scratched at the invisible force wrapped around his neck, feet dangling in the air.  
  
“You don't get to do that anymore," she snarled, "The Jedi don’t just ‘lift rocks’, they train us to _kill_ too, did you know that? I could crush the life from you right now and your stupid little business partners would become _my_ partners… ” She squeezed harder and his heels hit the wall as his struggling intensified.  
  
“ _If I wanted to._  I will do whatever I damn well please, and all you have the right, or the _power_ to do, is simply nod in acceptance. I trust you won’t act so ignorantly again.”  
  
He nodded frantically, but it was the sound of her name from the end of the hallway that broke her concentration.  
  
“Shara! What are you doing?!”  
  
Her father fell to the ground with a thud and she took a step forward to loom over him “I’m doing whatever I kriffing want!”  
  
“Shara, if Luke knew that you-”  
  
“Well he won’t know, will he!” she snapped. “I need some air.” she mumbled as she stormed past him and towards the balcony stairs.  
  
Ben looked back at her father, who had managed roll himself into a sitting position, smirking. His fingers twitched with the sudden urge to choke that expression off the man’s rotund, flushed face himself. Instead, he took off to follow after Shara. He found her standing at the railing overlooking the sea. The salty breeze threatened to pull loose the elaborately styled curls that had been pinned away from her face to tumble down the middle of her back.  
  
“The Jedi aren’t supposed to act out of anger, you know.” he was attempting to lighten the mood, but it fell flat.  
  
“Well perhaps I shouldn’t be a Jedi, then, since I do so many things I’m not supposed to do.” She’d had a tendency to be snappy with the other students, but she’d never directed it at him before. It hurt his feelings a bit, but then he wondered if perhaps this was the charade of her friendship falling away.  
  
“Your father…”  
  
“What about him?”  
  
“When you came to Dynera, did he tell you to seek me out? I’ll understand if he did, you can tell me.”  
  
“He was actually just telling me that socializing you was ‘bad for business’.” She looked up at him, the cold expression on her face melting to softness when she saw that he was genuinely concerned. “Wait, you’re, you’re _serious_ … What would make you ask such a thing?”  
  
“My mother thought your father sort of, um, put you up to befriending me. I told her you weren’t like that, that you weren’t like him.”  
  
Her eyes searched his face. “You know that’s not true, don’t you?”  
  
He bit his lip and looked away. “I mean, yeah, of course.”  
  
She took both of his hands in her own. “Ben… look at me. I’d been there for a few months, and every day I saw you off by yourself. I actually was waiting for _you_ to notice _me_ ... when you didn’t I decided to approach you myself. It’s that simple. If you thought anything different…  you’re a nerf herder.”

He sighed with relief, not even realizing he’d been holding his breath. “Well since Luke has made me partly responsible for your training, I believe that would make you a nerf.”  
  
She smiled, and they both laughed, equally relieved that the strange tension between them was gone. “Well using that logic, only a nerf herder would spend his time with a nerf instead of enjoying a fancy party.”  
  
“You… _do_ realize that still makes you nerf, right?”  
  
She took a hold of his arm and lead him back to the stairs. “Well come then, herd your nerf to the dance floor. If we have to suffer through all this we may as well make them suffer too.”  
  
He hadn’t danced in years but still remembered everything his mother taught him. It seemed a perfect idea at the time, but when actually dancing with her he found himself more nervous than he expected. If it was attention they wanted, they _definitely_ had it; every time he looked up at least one set of eyes was watching them. It wasn’t just that though, when he looked down at her, one hand on her waist and one holding her much smaller, daintier hand, he was seeing her as more than just another student.  
  
She moved closer, wrapping her arm around his waist and resting her head on his chest. He licked his lips and swallowed nervously, mouth suddenly dry. His hand felt massive on the small of her back, and for a moment he just wanted to stop moving and hold her tight, savoring the press of her body against his.  
  
_No. No that’s against the code, you can’t do that. Stop._  
  
“It’ll be nice to be back on Dynera, away from all this.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah that'll be nice.” He slipped his arm a little further and held her a little tighter, being sure to enjoy a moment that he probably wouldn’t ever have again  She smelled like namana flowers and the floral tea she was so fond of, and for a split second he wondered if she would taste like that tea if he kissed her- his internal alarm chastising him at the thought.  
  
“Only a few hours here has proven why we don’t belong in politics, we’re nothing like our parents.”  
  
“You’re right. I’d rather get zapped by a thousand training droids than have to deal with this every day.”  
  
He felt a sudden coldness at his back, and somehow knew who it was before he heard her voice.  
  
“Shara dear do you mind if I cut in?”  
  
“I ah, no, no ma’am.” She stepped away quickly and Ben turned to see Baela Teshik standing too close for comfort. An ice-cold hand took his and she snaked her hand around his waist with a grin as he stood frozen to the spot, unsure of what to do.  
  
“You’ll have to forgive Senator Oshin, he’s just trying to look out for his daughter _and_ his business at the same time.” She was almost as tall as him, which, on top of all the stories about her, added to the intimidation of her presence. The dark purple gown she wore only served to match the purpling under her eyes, and dark veins spidered under translucent skin, giving the unsettling appearance of something dead brought back to life.  
  
“Miss, um, Miss Teshik, good evening.” He looked away, eyes searching the room, for once wishing his mother would swoop in to save him.  
  
“You see, the pressure on Bakura transport through Timrin would give the newer businesses on Bespin, your mother’s friends, I believe, quite the upper hand. I told him that of course your mother’s business isn’t _your_ business, but some men can’t see past the tip of their... credit accounts.”  
  
“No, no of course not. The Jedi don’t engage in politics, it’s-” he was cut off by a cackle.  
  
“Stars, your uncle must not teach history at that little school of his. It’s no matter, my niece is quite fond of you, and so by extension, I am as well. If you ever need anything… _anything..._ I’d be terribly hurt if you didn’t consider me an ally in these hard times.”  
  
“That’s, um, very kind, Miss Teshik.”  
  
She pulled him closer to whisper into his ear, “Call me Baela…  and should you ever want to expand your knowledge past what Skywalker teaches… _my_ library isn’t limited to the ideologies of ‘light’.”  
  
He half-stumbled a step at the end of her sentence. “Are you saying you have knowledge of the dark side? Actual Sith tomes?” The words came out with more excitement than intended.  He was both horrified but slightly thrilled at the thought. Not to use though, _of course not_ he told himself, but everything to do with the Sith and the dark side was so shrouded in mystery he couldn’t deny that he was curious.  
  
“They’re only a small part of my collection, but yes… I do.”  
  
“I, um, no, no I have no interest in anything like that, thank you though.”  
  
“Knowledge itself isn’t inherently evil, Ben Solo… that responsibility lies on the one who holds it and how they decide to wield it. If you think light side powers can’t be used for evil, well…” she smiled, but it didn’t reach the golden eyes that stared into his intently “You _really_ don’t know your history. Thank you for the dance, though- it’s been lovely.” She patted him on the shoulder before she left, making her way to the stairs that lead to the docking bay outside.  
  
Ben Solo was confused, but Kylo Ren knew what she was offering that night.

Even now, he wasn’t sure if she was a test sent by Snoke, or if it was as simple as her wanting to corrupt the son of a political rival. What he _did_ know was that after that evening the tone of his dreams changed. At first he thought it was because he was so curious as to what secrets were hidden away in her library, that perhaps his subconscious was dreaming up the dark powers held within. As time passed the dreams intensified in detail and darkness, until one night he learned how just how real they actually were.


	2. Riptide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little more backstory, a grumpy Hux, horrified Rey, and frustrated Kylo. 
> 
> There will be more answers next chapter!

When they returned to Dynera, Ben wasn’t the only one whose dreams had taken a turn towards the darkness. Shara found her sleep haunted by the things she saw, that she _chose_ to see, as she would remind herself time and time again when she snapped awake in a cold sweat.  After Baela Teshik left, Senator Oshin and his friends followed behind, everyone regrouping at his condo on the other side of the city. There they could speak more freely and meet with business partners that were better kept hidden from the public eye. Still furious with her father, she’d made a point to ignore him the rest of the night, even once they’d reached home.  
  
She was irritated to see the sitting room already full of people she didn’t recognize, all stopping to stare at her when they came in.  
  
“I’m afraid I’m rather exhausted, I’ll be retiring for the evening.”  
  
The senator put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, stopping her as she turned to leave the room. “Shara, dear, I understand that you’re frustrated with me, but many of the people here tonight were excited to meet you- they’ve never really met someone that could use the force before.”  
  
“Ah, so I’m to be entertainment, lovely, father, thank you.” She grumbled and scanned the room, eyes landing on a thin, copper-haired man in the corner with a scowl on his face, completely unimpressed with her presence.  
  
She reached out and summoned the rocks glass from his hand, polishing off the whiskey and doing everything in her power to not make a face as she swallowed the fiery liquid. She hovered it over her open palm for a minute before floating it to a side table. Everyone laughed and a few people clapped at the display, but one thought shot out at her.  
  
_Rude bitch._  
  
“What did you call me!? I _can_ hear thoughts, you know.” The young man visibly blanched as she pointed at him. “I’ll show you a _‘rude bitch_ ’.”  She used the force to pick up a decanter of red wine and dump it over the man’s head. His curses were drowned by the laughter of the other guests, and she smashed the vessel to the ground in front of him. “Goodnight, I hope I’ve been sufficiently entertaining for you all.” At that, she spun on heel and left the room.  
  
  
That was the night Armitage Hux officially decided he hated force users.  
  
  
Her father’s words echoed down the corridor as she stormed to her room. “She held me against the wall by my neck earlier, it was marvelous the kind of power she has, I’m telling you…”  
  
Shara jumped when the doors to her chambers opened to reveal Baela sitting on the bed waiting for her. “I hope I didn’t startle you, I wanted to give you something to help with your studies.” She rose and held out a chip from a datapad attached to a bejeweled lanyard. “Skywalker will teach you some things, but not _everything._ ”  
  
“What do you mean?” The rest of her father’s friends she had little care for, but there was an air about Baela that demanded respect. She had always been kind to Shara ever since she was small, even though she was admittedly a trying child and Baela had a legendary temper. She’d honestly seen more of her aunt growing up than her own mother, but there still wasn’t the closeness between them one would think would come with that kind of relationship. Those kinds of connections didn’t seem possible for the eerie woman, and it was an ability Shara sometimes wished she had herself.  
  
“There are some powers that, because they are not innate to the light, are considered ‘wrong’. I believe the Jedi refer to it as 'the dark side' or some such childish term.” She waved her hand dismissively as she walked towards her. “ There’s nothing inherently evil in power, Shara, it’s up to the person that has said power to use it for good things, or for bad things; both of which are completely subjective. It really is that simple.”  
  
“Are you saying… on that chip... it has knowledge from the dark side, doesn’t it.”  
  
“I don’t believe in the light or the dark- only the force, only the _power_ it holds. Some can wield it, yes, but most of them are too weak to grasp its full potential.”  
  
She gave her the chip, closing her hand around Shara’s to hold it tight. “I see such strength in you, and I would hate for someone else’s fear of true power to limit you… but let's keep this between us, shall we? I think we can both agree your father has enough ludicrous ideas as it is.”  
  
Shara said nothing and Baela smiled, reaching up to brush a fallen ringlet of curls from her face. “You looked gorgeous tonight by the way. And I don’t think I’m the only one that noticed. Good night, dear.” Without elaborating any further she moved past and left the room, the click of her heels on the tile floor echoing as she went to join the others.  
  
Shara stayed up till the wee hours of the morning scrolling through her datapad, both horrified and fascinated by the things she read. She'd never lied to Ben, and felt somewhat guilty keeping it from him when she returned to the planet. He would eventually find out, but that would be years later.   
-   
  
A dull ache in his lower back told him he’d been sitting for too long. Kylo wasn’t a creature made for sedentary work, which seemed to be what a majority of his new title entailed. When he wasn’t dealing with the tedious minutiae of running an empire, his time was split between training, meditation, and restless sleep. Most of his training hours were now spent maiming combat droids, not for lack of enemies-but for inability to find them. The Rebels had fractured and spread across the galaxy, popping up on one planet just to disappear again. Despite the resources and massive fleet at his disposal, he felt like it was just him against the whole of it, and he felt so very alone.  
  
He rose to his feet and shook his head as if he physically needed to shake himself back to reality. If he spent too much time immersed in thought he could lose himself in memories of the past. The worst part was that every emotion burned anew, reliving the moments as if he were there once again. He was almost to the doors when a sudden rage lit inside his chest.  
  
_It wasn’t fair, what happened. It wasn’t fair at all._  
  
The crackle of his saber split the silence and he spun to bring it down with a heavy backhand on one of the durasteel panels. He wailed on the wall, growls of exertion intermixed with the sputtering sound of plasma melting metal. He swung until the acrid fumes were too much and his shoulders ached from the assault. He was hunched over, hair plastered to his face with sweat, panting like a beast when a curt voice called out from behind him.  
  
“Ahem.”  
  
Kylo looked over his shoulder to see Hux standing behind him, tapping his index finger irritatedly on the side of the datapad in his hand.  
  
“General?”  
  
“It’s not of extreme importance. You seem… busy. It can wait until tomorrow.”  
  
“Then. Get. Out.” Normally he took pleasure in tormenting the unpleasant man, but he couldn’t be bothered to play the General’s games today. To Kylo, in that moment, Hux and his issues were so very, very small.  
  
-

 _The descent into madness_ Hux thought, bootheels clipping a tight cadence as he returned to the lift.  
  
After the girl killed Snoke and his Praetorian guards  (he didn’t believe it for a second), Kylo formed his own elite protection unit. They were never really present, though; something Hux found both bold and foolish. He’d been concerned that the knights might return from wherever it was they’d been, but Hux had a feeling he knew *exactly* where they were… and that they weren’t ever coming back.  
  
One day they were simply gone. He’d asked Snoke about them but was firmly told it was none of his concern. Hux knew better than to ask the same question twice, and didn’t bother with Kylo as he knew he’d likely get the same response.  
  
To the General, they were more henchmen than actual ‘knights’ or any type of _proper_ military force. Out of the seven, there were two that stood out, primarily because they were especially horrid in his eyes. The Zealot and The Bear, as he unaffectionately named them in his head. He’d never bothered to learn their given names, trying his utmost to distance himself and his army from what he considered mystical nonsense; an antithesis to the order he wanted to see in the galaxy. No, they were just as reckless as Kylo Ren and those particular two were just as irritating.  
  
He was fairly certain he knew who the Zealot was, though the identity of the knights was forbidden once Snoke had them masked. She would crawl through the minds of officers around her, taking punishment into her own hands at the slightest inkling of dissent. Any meeting that involved Kylo Ren often involved his pet cretin- a thought that once got Hux thrown into a transparisteel window. She would stand behind her master, still as a statue until someone dared to think something ill a little too loudly. He had to admit it was gratifying, though, when someone he disliked was found out.  
  
_I didn’t know Peavey could turn so many shades of purple,_ he reminisced with a smirk.  
  
The Bear wasn’t as tall as Kylo but nearly twice as wide, taken to smashing stormtroopers and equipment when missions didn’t go as planned. Any time they were assigned to a unit, Phasma made sure to send the worst along with him. She considered it a useful way to thin the less than desirable troops from the ranks.  Despite the many stern messages Hux sent to their master regarding cost and morale issues, the behavior went on unpunished. Well, until that temper turned back on Ren.  
  
Hux wasn’t the only one that noticed the Zealot seemed to be Kylo’s favorite. After a particularly dangerous mission to Balmorra, the Bear decided to address the fact Kylo and his pet remained behind. Hux was stepping down the ramp of the command-shuttle just in time to witness the beginning of the altercation. He couldn’t hear what was said, but the Bear drew his weapon on Kylo, and as he raised to attack the Zealot shot around from behind her master like a bolt, twin sabers slicing his arms off just past the elbow, before flying back up with a flourish to spill his guts across the hangar floor. The man, creature, whatever it was underneath the mask was already dead, but that didn’t stop her from further assaulting the corpse, reducing it to a charred, smoking pile of mangled flesh. Kylo simply tilted his head to the side, then walked through the pulp of a person to address the returned party.  
  
Kylo had the remains cremated and kept the ashes in his favorite interrogation room, a silent warning to anyone that might consider stepping out of line. Hux could appreciate the symbolism, but it didn’t mean he found it any less disgusting. He quietly thanked the stars that the henchmen were gone, as when the time came to sideline and eventually eliminate Kylo, adding more force users into the equation would just be a mess.  
  
_“Stars, if the Zealot were here now I’d be done in for treason.”_ he snickered to himself as he stepped off the lift. With Snoke gone, the master of the lost knights was the only thing between Hux and the power he’d craved for so long.  
  
Under his breath, he whispered a promise to the empty corridor _, “_ No point in wasting time on worry; he’ll be with them again soon enough. _”_  
-   
  
Ideally, Kylo’s training consisted of a droid fighting against him with one saber, doing his best to prepare for the inevitable showdown with Rey that would come some day. The training sabers were turned all the way up, but would still only lightly burn on contact and stop his saber- nothing punishing enough to cause real damage. He swirled his saber at his side absentmindedly, chewing his lip as his mind drifted again. He punched the buttons in for a different program, and a dusty droid with two saber attachments wheeled out of its compartment, adjusting to a prerecorded height.  A scratchy blue hologram of an armored woman was projected over its surface, crouched back on one leg.  
  
When one has spent years sparring with the same person, a droid was barely a substitute, but it was the closest thing he’d had to Shara in four years. He set the difficulty to its easiest setting;  it was made up of familiar, easy fighting patterns when he simply wanted to move without having to focus.  
  
Luke had assigned Ben to assist with her training in the hope that helping her fix her own issues with patience would perhaps teach him about _himself_ along the way. It worked at first, but Luke eventually found out all they did was spur each other on. They’d continue sparring long after the required time for their sessions, sometimes because she was so frustrated she didn’t want to stop. Often they’d go to the pebbled shore of the riverbank, away from the rest of the students.  
  
“This is _impossible_ , Ben, and you know it! You’re so much bigger than me, I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to do anything.”  
  
“A Sith is hardly going to hunch down to your height to be fair, Shara, that’s not an excuse.”  
  
“Well the Sith are dead, so they won’t be trying to fight me, either,” she grumbled.  
  
“You’re right, the only enemy that matters right now is me. We can stop, that’s totally fine, or we can try again.”  
  
“Fine. One more time, “ but her sparring quickly degraded from a proper form to just angry swings. Ben sighed and held his saber out horizontally in front of him as she windmilled double-handed strikes against it until she tired, stopping to gasp for breath after her outburst.  
  
He holstered the saber and crossed his arms disparagingly. “If you’re going to rage like a rancor and not practice the form this is pointless.” Ben wondered if this is how his uncle felt training him (and if this is how he looked), and he felt a little sheepish.  
  
“I’m _trying!_ I want to get better!”  
  
“Well acting like _that_ you’re not going to get better at anything- unless there’s a moisture farmer somewhere in need of a windmill.”  
  
She narrowed her eyes “I’m _really_ fighting the urge to toss you in the river right now.”  
  
He laughed, “Oh really? I’d like to see-” his words were cut off by a feeling that was both being pushed and pulled as she swung around with both hands out, and before he knew it he was sailing in the air, landing in the cold river with a splash. He shot back up above the surface to see her standing with both hands to her face.  
  
“Ben! I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to!” He smirked as he snatched her towards him, and she yelped with surprise before splashing into the river beside him. She flailed when she came back to the surface with a scream; a giant piece of slimy, spidery riverweed wrapped around her face. “Kriffing hells! Ben!!! Gross, it’s in my mouth! Augh!”  
  
He swam over, laughing as he helped her pull it away. “Yeah, remember this next time you want to go chunking people into bodies of water.”  
  
“I only meant to make you fall into the bank, it was going to be a joke, I didn’t mean-” She slipped on a stone and fell into the water, the current dragging her down to where her feet couldn’t reach. Her hands splashed at the surface, and it took him a moment to realize something was wrong. He dove towards her and she felt a large hand grab her wrist, pulling her toward the surface. She sucked air into her lungs, choking in a panic as she clung to him. Once they were close enough to the bank for her feet to touch she went to push him away.  
  
“I’m fine, I’m fine I-I just can’t swim, it's embarrassing I know, I’m fine, it was stupid of me, this is all my fault.” Her hands were trembling as she brushed wet hair from her face, and instead of letting her go he pulled her tighter. She didn’t fight it and curled into him, closing her eyes as she rested her head against his chest.  
  
“Hey, it’s alright. I’d never let anything happen to you, promise.”  
  
  
It was a promise he didn't keep.  
  
  
Kylo stopped mid-fight and stared at the projection as she returned to her ready stance. He holstered his saber and walked back to the control panel, vision slightly blurred with tears he refused to let fall as he ended the program and sent the droid wheeling away to its storage compartment. He could never bring himself to destroy it- he’d already done that to her once, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it again.  
  
He returned to his quarters, completely exhausted. He didn’t know why his mind was suddenly drawn to that part of his past, but it felt like she’d been just over his shoulder all day. After taking a shower as hot as he could stand, he toweled off and dressed in a pair of soft, black night pants. He’d retrofitted Snoke’s old quarters on the ship, removing the gaudy gold decor he was so fond of (and ensuring the place was thoroughly deep cleaned). A living/entry room space was central, with his bedroom and refresher to the left, the kitchenette forward, and an office to the right. Well, it would be an office for an officer- Kylo kept the helmet of his grandfather in there, along with other various trophies and artifacts.  
  
As he was toweling his hair he noticed the door to the room was open, which was _not_ how he left it. He walked over cautiously, but the room was empty. His eyes fell on a locked chest on the bottom of one of the shelves. He hadn’t opened it since Snoke had “gifted” the contents to him. Kylo picked it up and set it on the bench, unlocking it with the pad of his thumb. It opened to reveal a myriad of sabers, but the one he was looking for was on the top.  
  
The hilt was slightly curved and solid black with three silver bands near the rounded pommel. There was a long claw of a blade shroud that was more for the wielder’s protection than looks. The corner of his mouth twitched in a slight smile; her single-handed combat was never as good as her double bladed, and the modification was his suggestion.  She took insult to it at first, but two days later she’d appeared with newly milled shrouds. He was proud of himself when they proved to be an improvement, and her begrudging approval turned into a huge grin when she realized the difference they made. The memory, like so many others, brought him pain as much as it did happiness.  
  
Rey could still feel the intensities of his emotions, extreme sadness, fury, or hurt would call out to her across the bond, but she always pushed it away, doing anything she could to distract herself and silence it. This time, though, curiosity got the best of her. She was alone in a workshop on the ship anyways, so she figured it wouldn’t hurt. _Perhaps I can learn something of use to the Resistance._ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath- when she opened them, she was standing a few feet away from a shirtless Kylo, sitting hunched over on a bench with a strange saber in his hands.  
  
“I would ask about a cowl, but I’m sure I already know the answer.”  
  
He lept to his feet, startled by Rey’s presence. It had been about six months since he’d last seen her through the bond on Crait. Her hair was down, with a plait on either side holding it back from her face, and bile rose in his throat at the very beige and very _Jedi_ robes she wore.  
  
“So, you have a new saber?”  
  
“No. This was my… my student’s.” Part of him wanted to sit down and tell her the story, like some kind of confessional, but he was still wounded by her abandonment on the Supremacy.  
  
“Oh, so you finally found someone who wanted you to be their teacher, then, hmm?” Though it shouldn’t, the thought bothered her a little.  
  
He said nothing, staring back down at the hilt, rolling it in his palm.  
  
“Wait... you said _‘was’_ your student’s. What happened, did you blast them to pieces the way the First Order did the miners on Ashin-9? Or did you burn them alive the way you did the crops that the Minoshan’s needed to survive their winter? Perhaps you drowned them like Capitol Raelign when their dam was blown to bits with lasers from your star destroyers??”  
  
He didn’t rise to her bait- what the First Order did in the name of victory was of really no concern to him. “No. I killed her.” The statement was blunt, emotionless.  
  
She furrowed her brow “That’s horrible.”  
  
“It is.” He brushed his thumb over the activator button, unable to bring himself to ignite it. “Is there something you wanted?” There was no reply, and when he looked up she had vanished.  
  
Kylo gently placed it back to the chest and returned it to its space before going to bed, crawling in between the cold sheets and hoping for a restful sleep. He didn’t have nightmares, but his dreams were haunting all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! It'll pick up next chapter. I've never written something that jumps back and forth along timelines so I hope I'm doing okay. Always open to constructive crit and comments! <3


	3. Little Tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreams or visions? Either way, we get some back story.
> 
> Not gonna lie, I teared up myself towards the end of this chapter <3

Normally dreams were from his own perspective, but tonight he walked through them like a silent observer, reliving moments from his past as if he were watching the latest holodrama.  
  
Kylo recognized the chalk lines on the training platform as markers for combat day, held once every few months to so Luke could identify their strengths and weaknesses and see how far his students had come. It was also a chance to move up, (or sometimes down), a level in training. There were about 30 students, and the older more advanced pupils would oversee smaller training groups to help lighten the work load on their master. Ben, of course, was in the top group of 3 other students; Adelin, Deric, and Chern. They were the first to fight for the day.  
  
Those three were fairly cliquish, with Ben being the odd one out. It bothered him a little at first, but having Shara made them irrelevant. All the socializing he’d had to do with his mother before was more than enough, and he didn’t consider himself as a person who really needed friends anyway. It was frustrating, though, how at times the nuance of social hierarchy could affect his training. At this particular moment it was now down to Ben and Deric in the chalk ring.  
  
Kylo remembered that day well. It was strange to watch his younger self sparring, occasionally losing footing from something flashing in his eyes. Adelin had a pendant around her neck and she twiddled it between her fingers, using it to reflect the sunlight in his face. He stumbled and his foot slipped out of the ring, leaving Deric victorious. He wanted to say something to Luke, but didn’t want to look like a sore loser. Instead he grit his teeth and accepted defeat, swallowing back the fury that swelled in his chest.  
  
Shara was in the next group, and before they paired off she ran over and grabbed his arm.  
  
“I saw what she did, I’m going to get her for it, just you wait.”  
  
“Just let it go, it’s not that serious.” He was angry, but always did his best to restrain his temper when he was near Luke.  
  
“No, it _is_ that serious. They’re always awful and I’m sick of it. Anyways, wish me luck!” She flashed him a quick smile and took off before he could say anything else.  
  
The other group had their rounds and Ben had forgotten the loss from earlier, beaming with pride when she finished at the top of her tier for the first time ever. Luke put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and congratulated him.  
  
“That’s quite a noticeable improvement, I’m impressed. You’ve done well.”  
  
Shara helped the fallen student to his feet, and marched over to Luke, looking all the bit a senator’s daughter as she approached, head high and back straight. “I request the chance to move up a tier, and I’d like to spar Adelin for it.”  
  
Luke looked at Ben and raised an eyebrow. “Was this the plan all along?”  
  
“No,” he looked at Shara pointedly. “And in fact, I think she should wait until the next cycle before attempting to move up.”  He wasn’t sure what she had planned but the glint in her eye told him it wasn’t good.  
  
“Well _I_ believe I’m ready now. There’s no harm in it, is there? Seeing as she finished at the _bottom_ of her tier, I don’t think it’s too outlandish a thing to ask.”  
  
Luke mulled it over, and decided this could be yet another learning opportunity for the both of them- For Ben to see the importance of being firm and through with other aspects of his teaching besides combat, and for Shara to learn either that hard work did indeed pay off- or that humility was an important character trait to work on.  
  
“Alright then, both of you in the ring.”  
  
Luke had felt the darkness on the planet for some time now, though nothing concrete. It would flicker just in the edges of his awareness like a fleeting shadow, or a whisper of something sinister hidden in the wind. He felt it then too and his eyes shot to Ben, who was chewing his lip as he watched the pair take their stances. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.  
  
Adelin was fast- the Twilek danced around her as Shara stayed low and played a firm defensive- an almost frustratingly _boring_ defensive. If the timer ran out Luke would hand-pick the winner, and it wasn’t looking good for her at the moment. Adelin smirked and Shara sprung with a growl, swinging both sabers in unison to land forceful double-bladed strikes. Adelin stumbled, a look of surprise on her face at the sudden onslaught. Shara didn’t relinquish a single inch and she was steadily pushed back until she crossed the line behind her.  
  
That wasn’t enough, though. Shara turned the blades off and quickly holstered her right saber, took a spinning leap forward, and backhanded her in the mouth with the hilt of her left saber, using her free hand to snatch the pendant off the stunned girl before booting her to the ground.  
  
“That’s what you get for cheating!” she shouted, before marching over to Luke and holding it out in front of her.  
  
“The only reason Ben lost was because that idiot was flashing the sun in his eyes with this!”  
  
He said nothing for a moment, a stunned expression at the unexpected turn of events, before addressing her incredulously. “Shara, you can’t _do_ things like that!”  
  
“I don’t care, she deserved it!” she huffed, panting to catch her breath “Cheating is pathetic and so is she!”  
  
He looked over at the girl who was holding her robe to her bloodied mouth, crying as the other students comforted her, and then back to Ben. “Please tell me you didn’t know she was going to do this.”  
  
“No! I told her to let it go!” he turned to glare at her. “And she disobeyed me.”  
  
“Adelin cheated because they’re jealous of him. That’s not fair, it’s not right!”  
  
“And what you did was somehow better?”    
  
“For every action there’s a consequence, and if she hadn’t cheated none of this would have happened.”  
  
“Good, you _have_ been paying attention. So you’ll understand that the consequence to _your_ action is that you _won’t_ be moving up, not for this cycle nor the next.”  
  
“That’s, but, I, ugh!” she sputtered “Well what about her?!”  
  
He took the pendant from her and looked at it before crossing his arms over his chest. “Her and I will have a discussion but that’s in no way any of your business.”  
  
She looked at Ben, who stayed silent as he frowned at her, and then back to Luke. She straightened her back and huffed. “I understand.” Though everything about her said otherwise.  
  
“You’re dismissed for the day, I’ll find you later. We’re not done with this by a long shot.”  
  
She stomped off towards the woods, and Ben went to follow after her but Luke grabbed his shoulder.  
  
“Let her go. She needs to think about why this happened today, and you need to think about where you’ve failed.”  
  
“What? How did I fail? I have no control over what she did, I did _not_ teach her that!”  
  
Ben mastered his father’s deflection as if it were genetic, and while Luke found it amusing how much he reminded him of Han at times, it was important that he took a lesson away from this.  “The same way as when you send droids flying into the trees _I’ve_ failed.  I didn’t teach you that, but I failed to teach you how _not_ to do it. Do you see what I’m saying?”  
  
Ben looked away “That’s different though, isn’t it? I mean… I don’t have to worry about her the way you do me...”  
  
“It’s different, yes, but still very much the same.”  
  
“Well, can you tell me how to fix this? What did I do wrong?”  
  
“Who do you think *I* ask to help fix things when I’m trying to teach you?”  
  
“I, um, I don’t know.”  
  
Luke smiled softly, “I asked you to help her because I _knew_ it would be frustrating, but it will help you learn about yourself in ways better than I could teach you.”  
  
“So it wasn’t just because you took her as a favor for my mom, then?” He surprised even himself as he blurted the statement out, speaking without thinking. It had been weighing on his mind, and something about it he couldn’t quite explain had been bothering him about it since the gala.  
  
Luke sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “Okay, Ben, yes, it was a bit political, but she does have talent, and-”  
  
He could almost hear Teshik’s voice,   _Stars, he doesn’t teach you about history._  
  
“I thought the Jedi stayed out of politics.”  
  
“We do Ben, we do. That’s why I treat her like everyone else. I assigned you to her because I was hoping she’d teach you patience in a way that I can’t... Actually, you know what, go ahead and go after her.”  Luke patted him on the back, sure he was about to get an earful. “Explain why what she did was wrong because I really don’t think it clicked. I _think_ you might see what I mean when you try and do that.”  
  
Ben walked past Adelin on his way to the stairs and she left the group of pandering students to intercept him. “Ben, I really didn’t do it intentionally, honest.”  
  
He put his hand on her shoulder, speaking low enough that the others couldn’t hear. “You’re lucky it was her that did it and not me- I would have taken your jaw clean off.” He shouldn’t have said it, but the look of shock on her face sparked something wicked in his chest, and he smiled even wider and winked. “Now kriff off.”  
  
  
He knew exactly where to find her. She’d taken her boots off, dipping her toes in the water from her favorite rocky outcropping over the river. A large willow tree had managed to take root, its wispy limbs dipping into the river as it grew precariously from the side of the bank. She’d hidden herself in the droopy branches that seemed to form a leafy tent around the ledge.  
  
“I’m sorry, I disappointed you,” She called out over her shoulder, unable to bring herself to look at him. She overreacted and had no intentions of going quite so far, but it was like she couldn’t help herself. Worst of all, it felt _good. “_ I know you have to chastise me, but I already know what I did wrong... so just tell him you did it and leave me be.”  
  
He stood behind her for a moment before parting the leaves and sitting down beside her with a sigh. They both sat in silence for a while as he tried to decide what he was going to say.  
  
“You know, Luke was actually proud of me for a moment, before you went and did _that.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“_ I know, I know, I’m sorry…” her voice wavered, and she refused to look up at him. “I didn’t expect any of that to come back on you… please don’t be angry with me.”  
  
“I’m not mad at you, Shara. You have to think about the repercussions before you act, and only make decisions when you have a clear head.”  
  
She finally looked up at him, tears welled but not fallen in the corner of her eyes. “Something like that won’t happen again, I’ll remember to calm down next time.”  
  
He hated having to reprimand her, and feeling that the point had been made, he smiled and attempted to lighten the mood. “The look on her face when you hit her…. It was pretty gratifying, actually.”  
  
She looked away with a small laugh, wiping her eyes. “Oh, it was _very_ gratifying… I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, though.”  
  
“I’m not in trouble, it’s just Luke expects me to teach you more than how to swing a saber.”  
  
She sighed and laid back, the stone pleasantly warming through her robes. “I know, and I understand, but… That wasn’t right, and he seems to be oblivious to how that lot behaves. It’s infuriating at times.”  
  
He agreed, but he couldn’t tell her that. There were so many things he found contradictory and disagreed with, but he’d stopped questioning his uncle about such issues some time ago. All it did was make him worry more about the darkness that supposedly lurked within. He laid down beside her, propped up on one elbow. “Well, if being a Jedi was easy then everyone would do it.”  
  
She rolled onto her side to face him, curling her legs up behind her and inching a little closer. “Sometimes… I don’t know if I’m meant to be a Jedi, like maybe there’s another option out there.”  
  
“Oh, so now you’re going to run off and be a Sith lord, then?” He laughed, but his eyes had a certain intensity at the question.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous, I just…” she trailed off, thinking about the memory chip that had been given to her. Ashamed, she’d tucked it away in her jewelry box and stuffed it in a chest, leaving it behind in her bedroom before returning to Dynera. “There’s more knowledge in the galaxy, is all, and I don’t understand why these rules have to be so strict.”  
  
“So if you found something that called on the dark side, you’d use it?” It was a bit of a drastic jump, and he felt like maybe he’d gone too far, but she didn’t seem phased at all.  
  
“Of course not… but… well what if it was, hypothetically speaking, a dark side power, but you used it do something good. Like, say you called on your anger to stop a ship from crashing into the ground and you saved hundreds of lives.”  
  
“So the end goal is something that the Jedi code would ask of us?”  
  
“Mmhm.” She stared intently at him, both still too nervous to blatantly agree.  
  
“Well, I mean, the rules aren’t entirely rigid I suppose, so I could see that making sense.” The darkness was the most sacrilegious, out-of-the-question thing that a student could think of, and he was sure Luke would have a meltdown if he knew what they were alluding to. He was somewhat relieved, though, to see that he wasn’t alone in wondering what other powers and abilities could be gained outside of the strict order of the Jedi.  
  
“That’s the way I look at it too, though I know it’s forbidden, so I’d never _do_ it, just wondering… you know, in theory.”  
  
He recalled the strange woman’s words at the gala. “I mean, knowledge itself isn’t inherently evil, it’s what you decide to do with it.” They stared at each other in silence for a moment, both afraid of what the other might think if they pushed further.  
  
“You know… sometimes…” The scene around Kylo faded into darkness and suddenly he was standing behind himself and Shara sitting on a log in front of one of the nightly bonfires they’d have in the autumn season. The other students had already gone to their huts, but the two had stayed up late, enjoying the peace of not having others around.  
  
“Sometimes I just feel that there’s so much more out there that we’re missing.” he said, absentmindedly poking at the fire with a stick.  
  
“You mean with the force?”  
  
“Yes, I just… I don’t know, it’s hard to put into words.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
Nothing more was said on the matter- Shara was still nervous that he somehow knew about what she took from Teshik, a fear that always hovered at the back of her mind. Part of her felt like she’d let him down and it ate at her. He was wondering if she was having dreams similar to his, and felt guilty not only for not telling her, but having them at all. It had been months since Teshik’s offer, but rather than fade the nightmares had grown more intense and gory as time went on.  
  
He was always dressed in heavy dark robes, hands encased in black leather gloves as they clawed out in front of him. Sometimes he would catch reflections of himself, but where his face should have been was darkness. The nightmares felt so _real…_ he could feel the force crackling through him as he crushed the life from hordes of faceless enemies. Every night now he was relentlessly chased and hunted through a rocky hellscape, using abilities and powers that were unknown and untaught to him to vanquish the creatures that followed.  
  
She slid down and closed the distance between them, leaning to whisper, “To be honest… sometimes… I don’t feel like I belong here.”  
  
He put his hand on her lower back as he turned to look at her, brow furrowed. “Well I _know_ you, do.” He couldn’t bring himself to admit that he often felt the same way about himself.  
  
There was a moment of stillness, their faces inches apart as she gazed up at him. The orange light of the flickering fire seemed to glow in the deep mahogany of his eyes. The thought of gently running her hand down his jaw and kissing him ran through her mind before she could stop it, and suddenly the tension was too much. She quickly looked back to the fire with a little laugh, “Well, if _you_ say so, it must be true.”  
  
She stayed sitting right beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. Ben leant back into her, his hand slowly moving to rest around her waist. He loved being this close to her, and tried to enjoy it as much as he could, knowing anything further was forbidden.  They sat together in silence for some time, staring at the crackling flames before a noise in the woods startled them, the pair pushing themselves apart and turning to search the bushes.  
  
“Not interrupting anything, are we?” They jumped apart and Shara hissed under her breath.  
  
“No Adelin, we were just thinking about how much we missed you.” Ben replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. Shara said nothing and glared- she still hadn’t forgiven her for cheating during the summer,  but she’d promised him that to make up for the incident in the ring she’d leave Adelin alone. It was a promise she found difficult to keep.  
-  
  
Kylo turned to look behind him, but rather than see her the scene shifted again, about a year forward, and he saw his younger self walking as fast as he could without running, trying to project some semblance of calm. Students all stopped what they were doing to stare at him as he passed. News traveled at lightspeed across the galaxy, and though the revelation had only been brought to light that morning, his mother had already resigned her position and stepped down in disgrace. It was apparent that everyone there knew what the rest of the galaxy did too- that he was the grandson of Darth Vader.  
  
Luke had tried to break it to him gently and had Leia on the comm as well to help, but it was still too much. The fact that they’d always known and kept it from him felt like a betrayal, like they still didn’t trust him and that he would forever be a child in their eyes.  
  
“I just need to be alone.” It took everything he could to choke the sentence out before fleeing the room. He didn’t want to be alone, though. He wanted to be with the one person that wouldn’t judge him. He stormed through the groups of training students, eyes focused on the edge of the forest instead of looking at all the faces staring at him.    
  
As time passed, both he and his companion had become more and more distant from the others. Most of their free time was spent at the river, away from the temple and the rest of the students. He felt they’d never understand him, and Shara simply found them irrelevant. _You’re my friend, what do I need them for?_ He was glad to see her blonde hair shimmering on the bank as he emerged from the treeline.  
  
She was hovering a handful of colored pebbles in the air, moving them slowly in a circle. She was so intently focused she didn’t hear him come up behind her.  
  
“I’m sure you’ve heard.”  
  
“Stars, Ben!” She jumped and the pebbles flew off in every which way as he stood behind her.  
  
“Tell me, what do you think?”  
  
“I _think_ you could have given me a kriffing heart attack. What is it about, that your mother stepped down? Yes, my father messaged me earlier.”  
  
“So you know that Darth Vader is my grandfather.”  
  
“Well you come from Skywalkers, so everyone already knows your lineage is powerful. Now it’s just doubly powerful then I suppose.” She hadn’t turned around, and moved her palms back out, trying to retrieve each colored rock one at a time.  
  
“I’m telling you my bloodline comes from the most evil Sith lord in the galaxy and this is how you react?”  
  
Her father had mentioned it to her in passing, and she’d never brought it up because it didn’t really seem like a proper thing to do, all things considered. Actually, the more she thought about it the more she realized she’d also overheard it said in a conversation with Baela. She sighed and let the pebbles fall back to the bank and turned to look up at him, squinting in the brightness of the afternoon sun at his back, his face cast in shadow.  
  
“He’s not alive anymore so what does it matter? If lineage was really that important to who we are, then the pair of us would be off bickering as enemies in the Senate. Now _please_ come sit down, I’m going to go blind staring into the sun.”  
  
He said nothing and gracelessly sat on the ground beside her with a thud.  
  
“Besides, Luke is your uncle- he’s essentially the most heroic being in the galaxy and Darth Vader is his _father._ It’s really not as big a deal as you’re making it out to be.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”  
  
She paused to look at him, and now that she could see his face she saw that he looked to be on the verge of tears, his hands shaking as he picked at the hem of his robe. Her voice dropped to a more serious tone and she put her hand over his to still the fidgeting. “Hey… this is really bothering you, isn’t it.”

The bloody nightmares, Luke’s worry over the darkness in his nephew, his temper, it all suddenly had a concrete reason to exist. There was more than enough validity behind the reason to fear him, and it made him physically sick. “I-I just…” he couldn’t finish the sentence, doing the best he could to stifle the sob rising in his chest.  
  
“Here, come here, lay down.” She pulled him down into her lap and slowly ran her fingers through his hair, gently brushing the soft onyx locks from his face. “Ben, just breathe. Stop worrying yourself. Sure, there will be gossip for a day or two but it’ll pass. Some of the students here have criminals for parents, stars know _my_ father is. No one’s family is perfect.” She continued brushing his hair, consoling him, and insisting that everything would be alright. After a time his panic slowly melted away and he closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation of her fingernails on his scalp and the sound of her voice.  
  
Once his breathing had steadied and he was sure he was calm, he pushed himself up. “Thank you, I needed to hear that.”  
  
She laughed, “Oh dear, it’s all brushed up to one side, you look like a Tatooine sand rooster, hold on, let me fix it.” She reached a hand up to ruffle the wayward waves back into place. “ There, perfect as usual.” She let her hand linger for a moment, brushing a fingertip down his cheek. He reached up and took her hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing her knuckles softly. Her breath hitched in her throat and she blushed, frozen in the moment.  
  
“I appreciate you, Shara, I do.”  
  
Growing up she’d come to believe that all relationships were contrived and that romance was a rarity left to lore; that at _best_ love was an abstract concept that only existed in the fantasy of an ideal world… but she loved him; had for some time, really. She wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly when it happened- it just sort of became. He was genuine and thoughtful and kind and she absolutely treasured him. There was a deep-rooted sadness, too, as if part of him was always mourning. Though not intentional his family had wounded him in a way, and it was a pain she could understand all too well. When they were together, each saved the other from the hurt that lurked in the corners of their mind.  
  
The sound of the breeze picking up snapped her back to reality. She realized she’d let the sentence hang in the air too long, and stuttered to break the silence.  
  
“Well, you’d better,” her voice was a whisper. “There’s only one of me.”  
  
He looked away awkwardly, afraid he’d gone too far.  “I, um, don’t remember seeing you at lunch, you should come on while there’s still food left.”  
  
She rolled her eyes, “Well I suppose ‘food’ is something you could call it. I don’t recall anything in the code forbidding a kitchen droid or something.” She stood and crooked her arm in his, and they made their way back, both pretending that nothing happened.

  
“Yeah I mean Luke is his uncle, but he’s a Jedi master so we already _know_ that he’s good. What if Ben always comes out on top because he’s secretly using the dark side to get an edge on us?”  
  
_You’ve got to be kriffing kidding me, the absolute bastards._ All the work she’d done to convince him everything was okay had been destroyed in a fraction of a second when they came around the corner of the gate.  
  
“Ooo if he hears you say that he might-”... his sentence died off when Chern looked up from his wood carving to see Ben and Shara staring at him.  
  
“I might what? I might do _what?_ ”  
  
“Hi Ben, um, we weren’t talking about _you_ , we-”  
  
“Oh, you mean _this_?” He clawed out his hand and snatched the young man up by his throat, legs kicking in the air as he frantically clawed at the invisible pressure around his neck.  
  
His friend stood up as if he were going to do something and Shara lunged forward, fists by her side. “This doesn’t concern you, Deric.” He was frozen in place, eyes darting between Shara and his friend dangling in the air.  
  
“I think you guys made your point, let him go. Please, put him down, Ben, I’m sorry!”  
  
Ben was grinding his teeth, staring daggers into Chern’s flushed face, lost in his fury.  
  
“Ben…” there was no response, and she gently put her hand on his shoulder “Ben, that’s enough.” He released him abruptly, chest heaving, looking both surprised and appalled with himself. He said nothing and stormed off toward his hut. She followed behind him, but not before pausing to address the two terrified students.  
  
“Speak a word of this to anyone, and I’ll gut you myself.” she snapped before taking off after him. After the incident with Adelin, no one dared push her. She ran to catch up and grabbed his arm. “Ben, just ignore them, they’ve always been jealous of you, you know that.”  
  
“They’re right. I could just turn one day, kriff,  maybe I already _am_ turning and don’t know it yet. I shouldn’t even be here, I should never even use the force again.”  
  
“Oh stop, you’re being melodramatic. Ben… Ben! Stop, listen to me!” She used both hands to grab his arm and pulled him to a standstill. “ _Look_ at me.” The muscles in the side of his face twitched as he clenched his jaw, refusing to turn and look down at her. She huffed and spun him around, taking his face in her hands. He said nothing and stared down at her, soft brown eyes haunted with a melancholia that reached deeper than she knew.  
  
“You’re one of the kindest, most wonderful people I know, that I’ve _ever_ known.” _I love you._  She’d wanted to say- wanted to shout it in his face and shake him till he realized that he was someone that deserved to be loved; but fear held the words from her lips. Instead, she just stared up at him plaintively, hoping he’d realize what she meant.  
  
Kylo reached out to touch her, but at the brush of his fingertips she disappeared, the scene dissolving and the air cooling around him. The crisp smell of dew and sickly sweet korana flowers told him it was morning now.  
  
Kylo was standing behind the group of Luke’s highest tier of students, where at this point Shara had finally worked her way up to. It was the day after he’d choked Chern, and it appeared her threat against the two didn’t hold weight. Luke stood in silence, staring at Ben. Deric & Chern both shifted their weight nervously at Luke’s side.  
  
“Is there something that I should be made aware of?” The color ran from Ben’s face, and as he took a breath to explain himself, Shara stepped forward. The news of his lineage had devastated him, and the last thing he needed was his uncle rubbing salt in the wound by going on about the dark side. She found Luke insensitive at times, and would rather bear the brunt of his lectures and punishment than have Ben pushed even further into the pit of his self-loathing. Shara’s mother made no secret of the disdain she had for her only daughter, and she’d learned from a young age to let words slide off her back. Luke’s admonishments would be no different to her, but crushed Ben every time.  
  
“Those two ingrates were mocking him because his grandfather is Darth Vader.” the other students flinched at the name, as if the words themselves were dangerous. “I choked them and threatened to gut them. I apologize, it wasn’t the right thing to do and I gave in to my anger. It won’t happen again. They likely told you that Ben did it because they’re afraid of me and jealous of him.” She narrowed her eyes as she glared at the two beside him.  “Same song different day, isn’t it.”  
  
Luke was exasperated and absolutely at his wits end with her. He had fought so hard to keep Ben on the right path and nourish the light in him, and this girl with her haughty, careless attitude was stomping all over it like a Rancor in brass boots.  
  
“I’m not surprised at all, and that in itself is _not_ a good thing. You, come with me.” She walked over and he firmly grabbed her above the elbow, leading her away from the group and into the temple. He stopped in front of a balcony that overlooked the grounds, the morning sun barely shining through heavy clouds.  
  
Kylo followed, wondering what his mind was going to show him. They’d never really discussed what Luke told her, so anything he saw here would have to be fabricated by his subconscious… unless it was a vision... though he couldn’t think of a reason why the force would be showing him the memories of a woman long dead.  
  
“I’m beginning to wonder if you actually think you’re doing the right thing, or if you’re just doing whatever you want because you think that you’re entitled to that behavior.”  
  
She pulled away and took a deep breath as she thought about what she was going to say. “I know how it looks, Master Luke, and I realize it was wrong, but they said he used the dark side to get an edge over them, that everything he’s worked so hard for is actually just him drawing on darkness. It’s a horrid thing to say.”  
  
“So _they_ say something wrong, and you use that to justify giving in to your anger and doing something even worse.” He shook his head in disappointment. “We had this exact same discussion almost a year ago. Not only did you use the same reasoning then, but you also said it was in Ben’s defense. Stop using him as a scapegoat for your inability to control your temper.”  
  
She crossed her arms and huffed. “Do you know what brought me to him in the first place? I noticed that you treated him so different from the other students. Well, they picked up on that and started doing the same thing, and _have_ been doing that for some time.”  
  
“He _is_ very different from the other students here. There are reasons for everything I do and frankly I don’t have to explain myself to you. It’s not your place to deal with other students and it’s certainly not your place to tell me about my own nephew.”  
  
“He’s good, you know. Genuinely good, despite how much he doubts himself. It seems like with the… news… and what not, everyone else refuses to see it. It hurts him, and I can feel his sadness. Like his mere existence is letting you down.”  
  
“I know,  but there is a darkness in him and it’s been there since the day he was born. His training might not always seem fair to those on the outside, but the journey he has is twice as difficult as the others, twice as difficult as _yours._ Your inability to understand that is a disservice to him.” And just like that she closed up and looked away.  
  
“Well I think there’s darkness in everyone, force sensitive or not. I’ve seen it, and it’s not something that someone who is trying so hard should have held over their heads their whole lives. You should be proud of him for carrying on as much as he has.” she snapped.  
  
Luke narrowed his eyes, as if he was really seeing her for the first time. He remembered when he met Leia to pick her up- she was force sensitive, sure, but nothing that spectacular. His sister thought he could save her from becoming an extension of her father’s crooked legacy, and Luke thought she would be a fairly easy to handle student. The young woman in front of him now seemed too late for saving- bull headed arrogance and the need to be ‘right’ more important than anything else. He stepped in front of her, and she looked up to see him staring down at her with a stony gaze, jaw set. “Shara what is it you want from here?”  
  
“I want to become a Jedi Knight, of course.”  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
“I- I beg your pardon?” She laughed, looking away awkwardly. Her heart fluttered nervously in her chest and a spike of adrenaline shot through her. “I think I’ve spent a little too much time here for _that_ to be the case.”  
  
“I’ve thought for quite some time that you weren’t too vested in the teachings here, and your flippant attitude regarding the power of the dark side either means you just don’t care or you’re stupid.” Her mouth fell agape and she stared back, speechless.  
  
“And you know what? I don’t think you’re stupid, Shara, in fact I think you are very _not_ stupid, which is the most frustrating part about all of this. Now look, you’ve learned enough to take your abilities and go do some good in the galaxy, and I feel that it would be best if you-”  
  
“No!” She lunged forward and grabbed his hand. “Please don’t send me away, please, I promise I’ll try harder, I didn’t mean to be so disrespectful, it’s just- I just-” she stumbled over her words, frantically trying to find the right thing to say. “It’s difficult for me too, you know! When I first met Ben we were _both_ lonely here. You don’t know what it’s like being a politician’s daughter, I had friends essentially assigned to me, everything was a sham or part of some greater collusion. It’s so different here, it’s the first place I’ve ever felt peace, _true_ peace, anywhere. I just get carried away sometimes. I’ll do better in my studies, I promise you. I _promise_ … _just…_ _please... please let me stay._ ” As her throat tightened her voice squeaked into a whisper, and she did her best to blink back tears.  
  
He put his other hand over hers, “The amount of passion you showed me just now is more than I’ve seen from you over the past few months combined. I want you to remember this moment and use it push you forward in your training. It’s only going to get harder, and you’re going to have to start searching deeper inside yourself for your purpose here. You’re at a crossroads, Shara, and it’s up to you to decide what path you’re going to take.”  
  
Her voice wavered as she tried to maintain her composure “I-I under… I understand.”  
  
“My question to you still stands though, what is it that you want from this? You need to think on it and be honest with yourself. I don’t need an answer today, not even tomorrow, but if you’re going to stay then I’m going to need to know what you and I are working towards, and we _will_ be working more closely together. I feel like perhaps I’ve slipped as a teacher in not paying more individual attention to those who need it.”  
  
She said nothing and nodded, biting her lower lip.  
  
“But don’t worry… you’ll have plenty of time to think about it while you dust everything in the great hall and are on clean-up duty after meals for the next week. Now go on. Get to dusting.”  
  
She simply nodded again and dried her eyes as she walked down the hall to find the supply closet, trying to calm herself and settle her nerves. _I’m appreciative of Luke_ , she told herself, _I should be grateful…_ but this tiny voice at the back of her mind said she _hated_ him, too.  
  
Ben was worried when Luke returned without Shara and started their lesson. Not only did he feel guilty for her taking the blame, but now he felt doubly guilty for not telling Luke the truth. There was just no winning in the situation. Luke could tell how distracted he was and ended the session early to take his worried nephew aside.  
  
“Your friend and I had a very productive conversation, and she’ll have a lot of time to think about it with the task list I’ve set out for her this week.” Luke smiled playfully but Ben just looked miserable. “You two do spend a _lot_ of time together.”  
  
“It’s not like that, it’s not, we’re just friends.” He blushed and started fiddling with a loose thread on his sleeve.  
  
Luke couldn’t help but find it endearing how bashful he got, doing a very clumsy job of trying to hide his emotions. Shara was right, he really was a good kid- and Luke so desperately wanted to keep him that way, which is why he pushed on. “I didn’t say it was ‘like’ anything in particular, I’m just saying that you’re going to have a lot of free time for a few days... it might do you some good to build up your relationship with other students. You know about what we’ve talked about…"  
  
“You’re afraid now that I know about my grandfather it will make it worse.”  
  
“It’s not just that, Ben. I know Shara is your friend, but she doesn’t take this as seriously as you and I do. She lasted longer than I expected, but I don’t think she really cares enough about the teachings here to stick with it now that it’s starting to get hard. I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but I’ve known people like her before. She’ll be back with her father again soon enough, and that’s fine, it’s where she belongs.  But you? You belong _here,_ and I just don’t want to see you hurt… or lead down a bad path because your friend has different priorities than you.”  
  
_That’s not true, you don’t know her like I do,_ was what he _wanted_ to say, but he’d learned a long time ago that disagreeing with Luke was pointless. He clenched his hands into fists at his side and simply mumbled. “I understand.”  
  
It was after discovering his lineage that Luke felt the darkness actually growing. He would see flickers of it in students, and sometimes he would stand at the top of the hill in the evening, looking down over the huts. He could feel it slithering in the night, mocking him. If he’d paid more attention he might have seen and felt the darkness in the students that were unknowingly embracing it, but he was so hyperfocused on Ben that he thought all of it was coming from his nephew.   
  
Ben didn’t see her for the rest of the day, and only caught glimpses of her back in the kitchen during dinner. He hung around the gate at the stone fence that separated the cluster of huts from the training areas behind the temple, waiting for her to get finished with her punishment. Little lamps were set on top of posts to light the walkways, but once the suns set it was dimly lit at best. Deric and Chern emerged from the shadows and Ben pushed off the wall, the three staring at each other disdainfully.  
  
“We want to apologize for-” Deric started, but he was interrupted.  
  
“You’re really just going to let her take the blame for it, then? That’s not really the _Jedi_ thing to do, is it, Ben.”  
  
He could have let the insult roll off his back the same way he usually ignored their snide little comments or retorted with something equally snarky. Instead, his internal dialogue reminded him ' _I’m related to Darth Vader',_ and for the first time, that small voice told him it was a _good_ thing _._ He took a step closer, a feeling of excitement crackling through him at the thought of a fight. Deric visibly shrunk back but Chern stayed firmly in place.  
  
“I had to let her do it.”  
  
“Oh, you _had_ to?”  
  
“Because you were right.” At this he too took a step back with his friend. “There _is_ darkness in me. Luke knows it, she knows it, and you do too. It’s something you should keep in mind the next time you want to cross me.”  
  
“Well we’re apologizing for it, so-”  
  
“Oh shut up, Deric. _Luke_ wants us to apologize to you.”  
  
Ben snorted derisively. “How about you don’t we just pretend you did?”  
  
“That sounds good to me.”  
  
“Alright then.” Ben took a couple of steps backward to lean back against the wall, crossing his arms as he stared them down. They lingered awkwardly for a minute before retreating back to their huts. He waited a while longer, and was about to give up when he heard her mumbling curses and stomping down the path. He stepped out and smiled when he saw her, but she held her hands out to keep him away.  
  
“I smell like garbage and I have whatever that stew was supposed to be all down the front of me, please just at least let me change.”  
  
“I’m sorry that-”  
  
“Stop! Don’t apologize, or I _will_ come over there and make you smell like bantha foot soup!” They walked down the dim path, the crunch of pebbles underfoot barely audible above the loud song of the crickets hidden in the grass.  
  
“Well Luke already thinks you’re a bad influence on me, so I don’t think he’d be too surprised if you made me stink, too.”  
  
“Ben, that’s…” she couldn’t help but laugh a little despite the seriousness of it all. “That’s _not_ funny.”  
  
“So that’s why you laughed, then? Oh I see, makes total sense.”  
  
“What else did he say?”  
  
“I need to try harder, focus more, everything I do isn’t enough… the usual.”  
  
“Apparently I’m not doing enough either, so perhaps he’ll at least give you some more space.” They’d reached the door of her hut and she sighed. “Well I’m exhausted, I need to get out of this mess and do it all again in the morning.”  
  
“I appreciate what you did for me, I really do.” he went to hug her and she stepped back.  
  
“No, I-”  
  
“I don’t care.” He wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to him, resting his cheek on the top of her head. She nestled into his chest and closed her eyes, wishing that moment could last forever.  
  
  
“ _Stop_!” Kylo clawed out his hand as he shouted the command and the dream obeyed, freezing as if he’d hit the pause button.  
  
He felt sick.  
  
“We should have left then, _”_ he lamented to his younger self. At that time in his life it was something he’d often daydreamed about. There was such a relief he found in the thought of getting a ship, maybe having Chewie come get him, and escaping out from underneath the crushing mantle of power that he’d never asked for. He would be perfectly content to use the force for mediocre things… cheating at a card game or bar tricks, exploring the universe on his own terms and letting the galaxy run itself.

Light, dark, the Republic, the Imperials, votes, legislations, pages upon pages of dated philosophies that only worked in a vacuum… he’d be free from all of it.  
  
“You wanted to be free too, didn’t you…” he whispered, “And you would've left with me, I know you would have. ” Everything in the dream stayed frozen, the only thing that moved were her eyes as she opened them and looked at Kylo like she could actually _see_ him.  
  
“Yes.”  
-  
  
With a sharp gasp Kylo sat bolt upright in his bed. He threw the covers off, sweaty skin prickling in the cold recirculated air of the ship as he ran across his quarters to the office. He yanked the box from its shelf and threw the lid open, grabbing her saber and igniting it. In a stark contrast to the crackle of his blade, this one hummed in his hands, almost seeming to sing as he spun it at his side before holding it out in front of him. The emotion held over from his dreams built itself into a panic, eyes darting to the darkened shadows of the room as if something were there.  
  
“What is this? Why is this happening?” He demanded of the empty room around him, actually expecting some sort of answer. He swallowed nervously before bringing himself to say her name. “Shara? Saiell Ren? _Why_ is this _happening!_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! This is my first time writing a character like this, and I hope it's all going well. I'm so excited for the next few chapters and really just this story in general <3 feel free to let me know what you think in the comments
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	4. And Then I Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Muffins, mouse droids, and the night everything changed.

Butter, marmite, and marmalade.  
  
The General didn’t realize how perfectly he matched his equally bitter and equally orange breakfast as he crunched away at burnt toast. Every morning he stopped by the mess hall before the first shift began to eat in peace and quiet. He looked up in irritation at the sound of heavy footfalls interrupting his morning ritual to see Kylo Ren stalking behind the serving line, rifling through the trays of breakfast items and filling his thermos with caf. He didn’t notice Hux till he was leaving and froze mid-stride, like a child caught stealing candy.  
  
It was a very grounding moment for him to see the Supreme Leader slouchd awkwardly with a handful of blueberry muffins clutched to his chest. He usually had food sent to him, and Hux had almost forgotten the man still required the same things to live as ordinary creatures. Purple rings haunted the delicate skin beneath his eyes, and he seemed even paler than usual; at least that’s what Hux thought- he tried his best never to look at him for too long.  
  
_Stars he looks like absolute shit._  
  
Kylo must have heard the thought because he immediately turned around and quickly stormed out the door.  
  
“I may not have to do anything at all, he’ll be the undoing of his own kriffing self.”  Hux mumbled before taking another bite of toast, smiling smugly as he chewed. _What a lovely way to start my day._  
-  
  
After catching his breath in the dimly lit room that was more trophy display than office, Kylo had quickly switched off the saber, staring down at it in horror. Hearing the heartbreakingly familiar hum of that blade in real life was more painful than any dream could wish to be. He shoved it back its box, locked it, and put it on the lowermost shelf;  as if hiding it away might take the memories with it. He wiped the corners of his eyes as he stood in the doorway of his bedroom, afraid of what his mind might bring should he try to sleep again. It was a little after 0500, much earlier than he cared to start his day, but there was certainly enough work before him that an early start wouldn’t hurt.  
  
To ensure he was kept in prime combat condition, his diet was overseen by a nutritionist and primarily consisted of precisely formulated ration bars. At the moment, though, the thought of chewing some vaguely flavored brick of protein made his stomach grumble in disapproval. It was too early for staff to be at breakfast so he’d decided to go down in search for something pleasant to eat. Something sweet would at least bring him a small bit of joy, and caf would provide a much-needed energy boost.  
  
He was startled to see Hux there, and the General of _all_ people ‘catching’ him robbed the joy from his little indulgence. For a split second he wanted to crush them in his hands and toss Hux across the room, but he immediately felt foolish at the thought.  
  
_Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, destroyer of muffins._ _  
_ _  
_ _Kriff, stop thinking in her voice, what’s wrong with you._  
  
The General’s intrusive thoughts snapped him back to reality and he stormed out, angrily biting one of the pastries once he was in the privacy of the lift. Freshly brewed, the caf was just barely too hot to drink, but he swallowed the scalding liquid anyways. His sleep had been fitful for some time, and exhaustion from lack of proper rest was growing with each passing day. Caffeine helped to assuage the weariness in his bones, but more and more he was considering turning to tranquilizers for help. If it weren’t for his fear of assassination in the night he would have done that a long time ago.  
  
The stars greeted him as he entered his meeting room and he gracelessly thunked into his chair with a sigh. After a few bites he couldn’t even find enjoyment in the muffins, realizing he’d lost his tolerance for sugar. The third and final muffin turned his stomach at the sickly sweet flavor, but he continued on.  
  
_You’re being ridiculous, Ben, put it down._  The voice in his head chastised him in her tone, and at the use of his old name (even though he was the one that was responsible for thinking it) flickered a flame of annoyance in his chest.  
  
“Stop harassing me, you’re dead.” He felt silly calling out to an empty room around a mouthful of muffin, and was a little disconcerted when it seemed to work. To spite the hallucination, he stuffed the other half of the muffin into his mouth and spun around in his chair to face his desk.  The motion knocked his thermos of caf to the floor. Though there was a lid, it fell at the perfect angle to pop it off, spilling its contents everywhere. He mumbled curses as he snatched it up off the ground and little mouse droids whizzed over to clean up the mess.  
  
Kylo hurled the thermos down the length of the room in frustration, feeling a bit of gratification at the clang it made as it bounced off the metal doors.  He folded his arms on the computer panel in front of him and laid his head down with a groan.  
  
“Everything about this day is going to be horrible, isn’t it.” He closed his eyes for a moment, focusing on the gentle whir of the air circulator to center himself. When he opened them, he was back on Dynera.  
  
“No, not this, kriff  I need to wake up. This is just a dream, this… oh no, _please_ no…” The nightmares of blood and gore were somehow nowhere near as terrible as the memories his mind seemed so intent on tormenting him with.  
-  
  
_Did anyone see you?_ Ben whispered to the crouched form just past the gate.  
  
_You’re the giant one, the real question is did anyone see you?_ _  
_ _  
_ _No I’m pretty sure everyone’s asleep, let’s go._ _  
_ _  
_ The pair tiptoed carefully around the dry, newly fallen leaves on the path, doing their best to be quiet. They were able to relax once they made it to the safety of the tree-line. _  
_ _  
_ “Luke already thinks you’re a bad influence on me and if we get caught that’s not going to help your case.” It had been a few weeks since her punishment, and while she’d been putting forward a concerted effort during training, nothing had changed when they were alone together. In fact, their master’s concerns had become a bit of a shared joke between them. Humor made it easier to dismiss the very real worry that Luke might decide to send her away after all.  
  
“Pft” she huffed, “He thinks I’m a bad influence on my own kriffing self… you don’t think I am, do you?”  
  
“He just doesn’t know you like I do. He’s hung up on…” _on the darkness in me_ “On stuff that kind of keeps him from seeing the big picture sometimes.”

They came over the lip of the gully and stopped, awestruck at the sparkling rainbow of colors in the river.  
  
“They only come up from the ocean once every ten years, I _told_ you it would be worth sneaking out for.”  
  
Three foot long daun eels pulsed with luminous bioelectric flashes as they migrated down the river to spawn in warmer waters of the Southern regions. Each eel had its own uniquely vibrant hue;  greens and yellows, violets and blues, pink and reds. Sometimes they’d break the top of the water to flail and splash, emitting a bizarre little chirp that could only be heard when they were above the surface. Long narrow eyes reflected back the light of the full moon, giving the illusion of stars flying by at hyperspeed as they swam. It was truly an ethereal display.  
  
The air was cool and crisp, but a bit on the chillier side of cold, and she couldn’t help but shiver slightly. Dressed in light robes for sleeping, she hadn’t thought to grab anything warmer.  
  
“Are you cold? We can go back and-”  
  
“No, no, I’m fine.”  
  
“Here, if you get too cold, we can go back and get a blanket.” Ben stepped behind her and pulled her back to him, leaning down and wrapping his arms around her. She nestled back into him and he rested his chin on the top of her head, enjoying how it felt to hold her close.  
  
“Mmm you’re warm, so glad I keep you around.” she laughed.  
  
“I’m sure that’s the _only_ reason.”  
  
She steeled her nerves and turned in his arms to look up at him, placing both hands on his chest. He didn’t change the position of his grip and she stood pressed up against him, his hands on her lower back.  “What other reason _could_ there be?”  
  
“I don’t know.” he whispered. “You’ll have to tell me.”  
  
The rainbow of lights flickered across their faces as they stared up at each other, the rising heartbeat in her ears drowning out the sounds of the world around them. She’d be more than happy being his friend, but she wanted so much more. Shara had never known anyone like him, and that in itself made her want him more than anything. She’d held back her own selfish feelings for so long, but with her on the precipice of possibly getting sent away her self-control cracked a little more with each passing second.

She pushed up on her toes, sliding her hands to cup his face as she pulled him down to press her lips to his. She at least had to know, at least had to kiss him once before Luke inevitably told her to go. Just as she began to worry that she’d acted too impulsively, he pulled her tighter, returning the kiss fervently.

  
Years in the future; as blood ran out and bones broke beneath her hands- she would reminisce on this moment; the one spike that held her being down to the structure of humanity and kept her from losing herself completely.  But that was the future- and that wasn’t part of Kylo’s dream. Instead he hovered, or stood, he didn’t really know- wasn’t really concerned, lost in the moment as his heart hurt for the dangerous naivety of them both.  
  
Neither one could believe it was actually happening, that the want they’d denied and hidden away for so long was mutual. Ben had been telling himself that he was unlovable in _that_ way, that he was simply misconstruing friendship for something more. Shara was afraid that he’d never even consider such a thing, and that she would only ever be a platonic companion to him. Her lips parted as he kissed her deeper; she tasted sweet, like her favorite floral tea and Ben swore he could kiss her forever. Breathless, lips flushed, they finally separated, staring at each other and unsure of what exactly was going to happen next. She suddenly went rigid, panic across her face as she looked just past him.  
  
_“Ben… don’t... move.”_  
  
He slowly turned his head to the side to see a herd headed by a large male boeara gathered at the lip of the gully. Between the chirps of the eels and their state of… distraction… neither had heard them approaching. They were frightful beasts, easily 3-400lbs with coarse wooly hair, and a row of four tusks that protruded from their lower jaws. Their hooves were almost prehensile, split into three, knuckled sections that allowed them to better grip on the rocky foothills of the mountains. It appeared the eels weren’t the only things migrating South.  
  
“Walk backward... slowly…  if we can get up on that ledge… we can hold them off…” He turned so he was facing them, and they both started to move towards the large boulders that edged the river. Her ankle twisted on the uneven shore and she stumbled. The motion was enough to spur the creatures into action. The pair sprinted to the rocks, getting to the top just in time.  
  
The creatures were larger than they’d thought, and the biggest one almost reached the top in one leap at their heels. As it hunkered back to jump again Ben reacted in pure instinct. He spun around and reached out, two fingers and thumb outstretched, turned his palm up, and closed them into a fist, all in one smooth sweeping motion. There was a cracking noise and the creature’s shriek was cut off with a gurgle mid-jump. It slid down the side of the boulder, dead. The others fell back, unsure of what to do now that the alpha male had been slain.  
  
“Ben!” He looked down at her, mouth agape, just as surprised as she was. “How did you do that?”  
  
“I have these dreams where I know how to do things… things that Luke hasn’t taught me. I didn’t think they were real,  but what I just did… I’ve dreamt about doing it before.” He didn’t tell her that they were actually nightmares in which he’d done that exact same technique to actual people. He immediately felt embarrassed, like he’d said too much and sounded like a monster, but instead of horror she looked fascinated.  
  
“Show me.”  
  
As if on cue, one of the creatures threw itself at the boulder, scrabbling enough to get half its body over the ledge before falling back down.  
  
The teacher in him took over, and he explained it as plainly as levitating rocks. “Give me your hand, here, do this, and when you reach out with the force imagine it takes the shape of your fingers, but instead of reaching around your target to grasp it, it’s like you’re reaching _into_ them. Visualize going just that much further.”  
  
Another one launched itself towards them, teeth gnashing and tusks struggling to pierce flesh. She did just as he instructed and was thrilled to get it right the first time; something that never usually happened for her. She grinned, quite pleased with herself as the creature shrieked and fell to the ground. Ben smiled, proud of her _and_  himself.  
  
“That’s incredible, it’s like the heartbeat calls to you, it- ah!” She’d moved closer to the ledge to peek down and another creature lunged upwards, its eerily hand-like hooves almost grabbing her. Ben reached out and killed it swiftly. Three more tried and were felled, and at the last death the point seemed to have been made. The remaining creatures shifted in a grunting mass before realizing they weren’t going to win a meal here. The new self-proclaimed pack leader squealed, and they all ran back up the gulley, retreating into the night to continue their journey South.  
  
Shara hugged him tight, pulling back to look up at him in adoration. “You were _amazing,_ I’ve never seen anything like it!” She kissed him again... but it broke the spell of the moment, bringing reality crashing back down on him.  _We killed for the fun of it, I shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t be doing this, what am I doing??_  
  
He pulled away, “No, Shara, we can’t.” The look of hurt on her face only served to make him even more upset. “We shouldn’t have done that at all, it was wrong, the code-”  
  
She shoved him away, scowling. “The code can burn in a thousand kriffing Sith hells as far as I’m concerned. It’s outdated cultish drivel made to stifle people into a porridge-like existence.” she spat.  
  
“Is- Is that really what you think?” he was taken aback by her tone, unable to think of anything else to say as the situation kept growing into something he just couldn’t handle at that point in time.  
  
“You don’t believe in it either, you’re only doing this because you feel like you have to, like it’ll make your uncle and your parents happy. In case you haven’t noticed our parents barely even think about us at all, so why you should go on carrying some torch for them is-” She stopped at the look on his face, blinking rapidly as she came to her senses. “Ben…  oh Ben I’m so sorry I didn’t mean-”  
  
He bit his bottom lip and said nothing, mouth moving as if he were holding back what he wanted to say.  The truth was he didn’t know _what_ to say... _Just like with Luke._ He was constantly caught in a tug-of-war between how he felt and how his uncle would react… the never-ending battle of wanting to please others and eke out some bit of happiness for himself.  It was exhausting, and right now he just wanted to say something to fix this, to make it right, but there was no undoing what had been done… and there was no way to choose between her and the training he’d promised himself to. _Damned if I do, damned if I don’t._  
  
She took his hand, wanting to do anything to stop him from looking at her with such a pained expression on his face _._ “Please forgive me, I lost my temper.”  
  
He gently pulled his hand out of her grasp, voice a breath above a whisper. “I… should never have come down here with you tonight.” He turned away, jumping down from the rocks and leaving her standing in place, mind racing but only running in circles as she watched him leave.  
  
“Ben!” He didn’t respond, quickly walking up the embankment to the path through the woods. “Ben, please!”  
  
And then he was gone.  
  
-  
Fear. Death and fear. Luke’s eyes snapped open and in a fraction of a second his feet were on the floor, covers thrown back.  
  
Students? No, this fear was different.  
  
Sentient? No, but still living; still able to know what it is to be afraid... still able to know death.  
  
And… excitement?  
  
Happiness?

  
  
Darkness.

  
  
His groggy mind struggled to process everything that was calling out to him all at once through the force. He quickly put his boots on and pulled a dark brown robe over his sleeping clothes. He had hoped the feeling would dissipate but the cacophony continued on, the dark pull flaunting itself, crackling like a burning ember dropped on a tapestry threatening to consume all he held dear.  
  
He rushed down the inner stairs of the temple and ran out to the pavilion that overlooked the settlement.  
  
“It’s coming from the woods... but what’s in the-” Sickness gripped his stomach and his insides went cold as he shook his head. “No… no no no please, tell me he’s not…” The darkness suddenly vanished, like his revelation had scared it into hiding. He reached out, the sting of death still sharply pricking at his awareness. Some thing, some _things_ had been killed, and the way it had been done was decidedly cruel.  
  
He made his way down the stairs and to the path that lead to the padawan huts, praying to every star that was ever hung that this was not going to go the way he feared it was.  
  
Ben’s hurried pace slowed when he came around the corner to see his uncle approaching from the other end of the pathway.  Luke’s heart dropped at the sight; he had hoped so badly to find his nephew sound asleep, that whatever it was he’d felt was another’s doing. They continued walking towards each other until they stopped in front of his hut, illuminated only by the light of the moons above.  
  
“What were you doing in the woods, Ben?” He did his best to keep his voice soft and even, but the look in his eyes told Ben he already knew what happened.  
  
“I... I went to go see the daun eels, they glow and it only happens once every ten years, and…” his voice trailed off at the expression on his uncle’s face; he looked as if he’d come across a dangerous stranger in a dark alley. “I didn’t-” he took a step forward and Luke stepped back.  
  
“What happened in the woods, Ben?” He repeated in the same unsettlingly still tone.  
  
“I, they…” he swallowed nervously and wrung his hands, trying to think of the best way to word what he’d done- what they’d _both_ done.  
  
“What did you and Shara do?” He didn’t even have to ask, the sick turning in his gut already _knew_ who he was with.  
  
“The boeara surrounded us, we were corned and had no choice! We didn’t have our sabers, there was no other way out, we had to… had to do _that_ .”  
  
“So there was no other option? Out of all the abilities you two have, killing a pack of helpless animals was your best way to deal with them?”  
  
The scales tipped inside Ben’s chest, and the nervous fear of his uncle’s reaction flipped into an anger of his own. He clenched his fists at his side and squared his shoulders, stepping forward again and his voice dropping low. “Yes. Yes it was. It was kill them or let them kill us.”  
  
“You can’t deal in absolutes like that, Ben, it’s wrong to-” and at that Ben lashed out, unable to contain himself.  
  
“Fine, fine! It was wrong! I was wrong! I’m _never_ right, so maybe there’s just something wrong with me! Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all! I can just go be a senator with my mother and pretend to like people I hate all day, it’s what I do here anyway!” He punched the door of his hut open and slammed it behind him. He threw himself onto his cot and angrily pulled the covers up over his face, trying to swallow back the growing lump in his throat, refusing to cry in frustration though tears were already gathering in the corners of his eyes.  
  
Shara had followed a ways behind him, trying to work up the right words to fix the messy situation. It was her fault all of it happened, and the guilt doubled on itself when she caught the tail end of his and Luke’s conversation. Once she was sure his uncle was gone she quietly padded to his hut and knocked gently on the door. It opened a few inches, but there was no response.  
  
She knocked again, still nothing.  
  
“Ben? I wanted to apologize for earlier, I won’t… ah...  it won’t happen again.”

There was no reply.  
  
“And for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, not at all. If anything, something is wrong with _him_ for not seeing that.”  
  
“Go away.”  
  
“Alright, I-”  
  
“And stay away.”  
  
He heard a small gasp at the door and a pause before fast footsteps retreated into the night. That was just enough to make him let go, and he pressed his face into his pillow to muffle the sobs. His uncle was furious with him, and everything was a mess with the one friend that he had.

Ben Solo was miserable yet again- the only way, it seemed, that the galaxy saw fit for him to be.  
-  
  
Morning came and Shara groaned at the memory of the night’s events. She was angry at Luke most of all, Ben second, and though she was loathe to admit it, she was angry with herself too. Sleep was fitful and she tossed all night, waking in an extraordinarily grumpy mood. The whole situation was just the worst.  It was barely sunrise when a knock broke her train of thought, and she opened the door to find Luke standing with a deadpan expression on his face.  
  
“I think you should go back and join your father.”  
  
“I agree.”  
  
They stood in silence, staring at each other. He was so worried about Ben that he’d never given any thought to the half-talented girl Leia had thrust on his doorstep. Looking into her eyes now he didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it before. There was a coldness in the face looking up at him; so much bitterness for someone so young. Luke spent so much time seeing the good in people that perhaps he’d been careless, not considering that her life before the academy had twisted something on a base level that couldn’t be undone.  
  
“Don’t worry about Ben, I’ll tell him for you myself.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
With that she slowly closed the door in his face. He couldn’t make out what she was shouting to herself, but the tone of her voice was more than enough to get a general idea across. He sighed and walked back to the temple, relieved that she was apparently already planning on leaving. He’d expected for the news to be taken badly, and that he’d have to sit down and explain why he felt this was for the best- though he couldn’t quite find polite words to explain it even to himself. He reached the top of the marble stairs and looked out over the padawan huts, then to the crimson skies of the two rising suns.  
  
“Well old Ben, I could use some advice about now. You only had one of me- there’s so many of them. I think I deserve a hint about now, don’t you?” He closed his eyes and felt a soft brush against his cheek.  
  
Rather than a force ghost to greet him, though, there was something stuck in his beard. He pulled out a leaf, its red and yellow edges signaling the change of seasons.  
  
“What, better landscaping? Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Thanks.”  
-  
  
Everything was different at training that morning. There was a palpable air of somberness that hung around their master, and Ben would catch him staring off, lost in his own mind rather than paying attention to the students. Shara didn’t show up at all, and anxiety sat heavy in his chest, turning like a writhing snake.  
  
_It’s better this way. It’s for the best._ At least, that’s what he kept telling himself, but really he was hoping she would try to apologize again. He’d accept it, stars he’d accept it, and he’d apologize too. Every time he thought about going to find her though he’d talked himself out of it. Their morning lesson was almost over when he saw her coming up the path to the pavilion. The spark of excitement he felt was quickly squashed when he saw what she was wearing.  
  
Her long golden hair had been pulled back into a tight braided bun, and a traditional Bakuran crimson and gray silk tunic replaced the beige Jedi robes. Makeup was applied to match her outfit, and darkened lips curved downwards in a pointed frown. She refused to look at Ben as she addressed their master.  
  
“My father will be arriving late this evening or early tomorrow morning to retrieve me. I thought you should know.”  
  
“So you’re just going to leave, then?” Ben blurted out before Luke could respond.  
  
He looked over at his nephew and raised his hand with a stern expression on his face, and then looked back to Shara.  
  
“You have done very well in your training, Miss Oshin, and I look forward to seeing how you use what you’ve learned here to make the Senate a better place.”  
  
“Perhaps. I intend to join my father in the outer rim.”  
  
“Well in whatever you do, I wish you the best.”  
  
“Thank you, Skywalker.”  Luke managed a tight-lipped grin, disappointed in himself at the sudden desire to chunk the insufferable woman before him into the bushes. She nodded curtly and turned on heel to leave, but Ben called out after her.  
  
“You were always going to leave, weren’t you?”  
  
She paused and turned her face slightly, stopping herself just before looking over her shoulder. “I’ll… tell your mother you said hello.” And with that she continued on back to her hut to finish packing.  
  
Well, that’s what she’d intended to do. The walk was spent blinking back tears, but she didn’t let them fall till the door shut behind her, at which point she collapsed onto the bed, grabbing a pillow and curling up around it as she cried. Her shoulders shook in silence, the white linen case stained with a mixture of mascara, maroon lipstick, and tears as it hid her grief from the world.  
  
Crying was always exhausting and she fell asleep, still clutching the pillow tight. It was easier to sleep until her father came for her than bear one more minute in consciousness on that planet.

Ben was numb throughout the remainder of the lesson. He tried to hyperfocus on everything Luke was doing to distract him from his own mind, but it wasn’t working. At the end Luke took him aside to discuss her leaving, but he didn’t want to talk about it.  
  
“I need to meditate and be alone.” he said flatly, at which Luke sighed and put an arm around him.  
  
“I knew this was going to happen and believe it or not it’s a good thing, Ben. She’ll be happier out there. You can’t see it now, and I know it hurts, but she’s been a distraction in a really negative way for you for some time. It’s been unfair to both of you, really. I think you’ll find that your studies are going to get easier… and events like last night won’t happen again.”  
  
Ben wanted to tell him that _he_ was the one responsible, that his nightmares had been teaching him powers the Jedi would consider forbidden- and that not only was he good at it, he _liked it._  He relished the power that surged through him and for once he was able to feel proud of his abilities- _all_ of his abilities. Part of him had grown disillusioned with the idea of desperately trying to cling to the light. For so long he thought that if he was good enough, if he tried hard enough, that the darkness inside him would be forgotten- forgiven, even. It had become glaringly apparent to him that his curse would always be at the back of Luke’s mind, no matter what he did.

Forever marked, forever sullied...  
  
Forever inadequate.  
  
But not to her.  
  
She was _proud_ of him. All of him. And now she was leaving, and it would be just him and Luke again.  
  
It made everything feel pointless.  
  
“You’re right.” He said as Luke continued on, and he simply continued to agree to everything his master said until he was finally set free to be by himself. He meandered for a little bit before going to the river, where he’d hoped to see her sitting on her favorite rock. He was greeted by the gentle whisper of the water and nothing more. Nature had quickly reclaimed the fallen bodies of the boeara, likely dragged off into the river by some carnivorous creature that lurked in its depths. Sienna-streaked rocks stained in dried blood were the only remnants of the carnage that happened in the night.  
  
He picked up a rock, turning it in his hands before skipping it across the water. The river echoed with the splish-splish-splash of skipping rocks till the suns began to set. He’d hoped she would come, that maybe he could change her mind. He took her absence as proof that perhaps his uncle _was_ right… and this was the way things were meant to be.    
  
Feeling defeated, Ben skipped dinner and went to bed early, for once preferring nightmares to dealing with the stress and sorrow that reality had put on him.  
-  
  
_“Did you come to save my soul?!”_  
  
It sounded like Ben shouted the question right beside the bed, startling Luke awake. He flipped on the reading lamp on his night stand to see the room was empty. That same darkness had returned, but was stronger by tenfold than the night before. He could feel it slithering like a thousand inky black tendrils creeping through the air to wrap him in their clammy grip. He dressed quickly, determined to escort Shara off the planet immediately if she had anything to do with whatever this was. His conscience, though, told him that he only wished she had... that he knew who was responsible the whole time, even when he blamed her for any actions regarding his nephew.  
  
Yet again he found himself rushing to the padawan huts under the moonlight- but the darkness didn’t recoil this time. It pulsed proudly, taunting him with its existence.  
  
The wind that rustled through the grasses lacked its usual serenity, instead sounding like sinister whispers of something wicked. The shadows cast were a void of nothingness threatening to swallow everything that the light didn’t touch, and even the stars above didn’t twinkle as brightly, like Dynera had dropped to the bottom of a black hole and the galaxy in which it hung was a million light years away. A once idyllic nature-scape had been poisoned with an unsettling aura of foreboding reminiscent of a scary fairytale.  
  
Luke reached Ben’s hut and gently opened the door. He was glad to see him inside fast asleep, but the uncertainty regarding his nephew remained. It wasn’t an ethical thing to do at all, but he _had_  to know. Luke reached his hand out and closed his eyes, delving into the mind of the young man before him, trying to manipulate the force into at least showing him a glimpse of his future.  
  
  
-  
The sky was a swirling mass of charcoal clouds and the ground was scorched; the only light in this hellish dimension was from molten rock glowing within spidered fractures in the earth. A sudden gust of wind picked up the black char from the ground, and as the dust swirled it formed a crouched figure at his feet. The back of its helmet was similar to Darth Vader’s, but when it whipped its head up to look at him he could see it was a different mask staring back. His blood went cold at the thought of who might be behind it. The figure slowly turned and rose to stand its full height, staring down at the Jedi master.  
  
The masked phantom ignited its saber; the hilt was eerily similar to Ben’s but blackened, with cross guards added to vent the vapors of a cracked crystal. It emitted an unstable crimson blade that crackled, popped and hissed as opposed to the lightsaber’s traditional warm hum. The figure raised the blade slowly at its side, and the ghosts of impaled bodies flickered across it as the force showed him every single life that would be taken by that weapon. Luke could smell the coppery tinge of blood and burned plasma in his nostrils as screams echoed around him. When they finally stopped the apparition pointed the blade at him and used his other hand to remove the mask in one smooth motion. To his horror it _was_ Ben staring back, lips curled into a sneer and eyes gleaming with malice.  
  
“And _that’s_ how I’ll become what I’m meant to be.”  
-  
  
What Luke didn’t know was that the future isn’t fixed and the fear of Ben he carried in his own heart tainted what the force had showed him. The visions he saw were the nightmares Snoke put in Ben’s head, the future _Snoke_ wanted for him. It may never have come about if Luke hadn’t gone down to the huts that night in such a state. He’d already told himself that the darkness he felt was Ben, he’d already decided that a streak of evil would always lurk within his nephew, and that training him was damage control at best.  
  
Unknowingly, he'd already sentenced Ben himself.  
  
It was a revelation that would take some time to dawn on him. One that would haunt him no matter how far he fled, no matter how wild and untamed the reaches into which he hurled himself.  
  
After seeing the horrific vision Luke yanked his hand back and grabbed his saber. In the briefest moment of pure instinct, he thought he could stop it, that he _had_ to stop it. His thumb slid up the activator button, and the green blade lit up the dark room. The sound startled Ben awake and he turned in his cot to see Luke standing over him.  
  
The last thing Luke saw was the frightened eyes of a boy whose master had failed him.  
-  
  
Having slept away most of the day Shara was now too rested to sleep. She’d finished packing her things when a crashing sound interrupted her pity party. It was the sound of falling rocks, punctuated with a spike of fear that shot across her mind through the force.  
  
_Ben._  
  
She sprung from the bed and flung her door open, not even bothering to close it as she took off running. Half of his hut had collapsed, and he was trying to climb out of the rubble.  
  
“Stars, Ben! Are you alright?” She ran over, grabbing his hand to help free him from the destruction.  
  
“He, he tried to kill me.” he panted.  
  
“Ben what are you talking about, who tried to what? Was it a dream?”  
  
“No, no Luke was standing over me, I was asleep, and he had his saber raised, he was, he was going to kill me I could see it in his eyes.” He was almost hyperventilating, and she could feel him tremble as she hugged him tightly. She looked past him over to the pile of rubble to see moonlight gleaming off Luke’s mechanized hand amongst the stones.  
  
“You’re okay, you’re safe. You’re going to come with me, I’ll tell my father to come now and we can leave this place together just you and me.”  
  
The noise had woken other students and they slowly emerged from their huts at the commotion.  
  
“What happened?” a voice called out. _  
_ _  
_ She answered for him as he still seemed too shaken to answer. He was always too blunt with words anyway, and she had to spin this situation _hard_ to make sure they didn’t see Ben as a murderer. “Luke tried to kill Ben in his sleep. He was jealous of his power, afraid he would overtake him.”  
  
“Is that true?” one of them asked.  
  
Ben turned, to face them, brushing his hair out of his face. “I woke up, and he was standing over me with his saber. If I hadn’t pulled the rocks down, I’d be dead right now.”  
  
“I don’t believe you,” one called out,  “You’re lying!” said another. It was hard to pinpoint with the murmuring going on. When Adelin and Chern started to make their way towards them Shara knew there was about to be trouble.  
  
Shara had always watched her father closely and learned the subtle dynamics of herd mentality- sentients were so similar to the boerra they'd encountered the other night. The position of power was empty, and they were looking for a leader. Where there should have been panic was instead the cold demeanor of a strategist as she looked out over the students staring back at her. Everything moved in slow motion as she assessed the situation- it was imperative that she chose carefully, a misstep was something they couldn’t afford.  It was finally her time to shine, and a thrill ran through her as she took control of the situation.  
  
_We’re playing my games now._  
  
She stepped in front of Ben, not only to be protective but to imply that she had his support. Her dominant hand was outstretched, palm up, reaching out in a friendly manner, while her left hand fell back, fingers near a saber to insinuate that there was a physical threat to those who might dissent.  
  
“Come with us. My father knows someone powerful interested in training force users on the Outer Rim- we’ll have everything we could ever need. Proper food, state of the art training facilities, no more lifting rocks and meditating with bugs crawling up our kriffing necks. Anyone who wants to-”  
  
“No!” Adelin stepped to the front of the group and cut her off, “We’re staying here and you’re going to answer for what you’ve done.” She ignited her blade and pointed it at Ben, and then at Shara to emphasize her points. “ _You_ killed our master because you’re related to Darth Vader, you’re bad, Ben, and we’ve all known that for a long time.  And _you_ ? You never even belonged here in the first place you psychotic _schutta_ .”  
  
Shara did her best not to smile; this was anticipated in her calculations. Ben growled at the accusation and Shara put a hand back to keep him behind her. “Adelin, that’s ridiculous. I’m trying to help, to offer something more. What do you intend to do, kill us?”  
  
“If we have to.”  
  
“ _We?_ Do you speak for them? The only one I see with a weapon is _you.”_  
  
Adelin turned and looked over her shoulder. “Who is going to help me stop them and avenge our master?!” A few more students stepped forward, sharing nervous glances as they hesitantly ignited their sabers.  
  
“It’s us or them- It’s _always_ been us or them,” Ben whispered, igniting his saber.  
  
Shara followed suit and called out to the students shifting nervously behind Adelin, “If anyone wants to come with us, I suggest you stay out of the way.”  
  
Adelin shouted as she raised her saber. “If Luke had listened to us maybe he wouldn’t have been killed because you gave in to the dark side!”  
  
“I’ll show you the dark side!” Ben roared as he shoved Shara aside charged towards the Twi'lek. Something seemed to break free in him and Shara as sabers clashed, fighting with a newfound furor they’d never felt before. As he and Adelin exchanged blows, Shara ran low through the other defiant students, blood sizzling as her sabers struck them down one by one. It was like finally being able to reach an itch they couldn’t scratch, or bursting to the surface after being underwater for too long. It was a feeling the pair couldn’t quite put into words, but it was glorious _._  
  
Fighting to kill was still a foreign concept to the students, and it showed in the way they fought- their ingrained fear to avoid a killing blow was ultimately their downfall. Ben realized as they parried that he too was holding back. Adelin spun to land a blow that was more ornamental than combat-sensible and Ben simply grabbed her arm to stop it and impaled her through the chest. It was symbolic in a way- she’d been one of the ringleaders in excluding him; always envious, always doing the most to be the teacher’s pet. She looked down at the blue blade sputtering in her chest and back up at Ben in horror, as if she hadn’t expected death to truly be a possible outcome.  
  
“You got what you wanted- proof that you were right. I hope it was worth it.” He turned off his blade and shoved her to the ground as casually as tossing a bag of trash.  
  
Just as quickly as it started, it was over. Only a handful of students remained standing just outside the ring of carnage around him.  
  
Shara holstered her blades, giving no thought to the people she once knew that now lay dead at her feet. “Those of you who wish to join us, gather your things and meet us at the landing pad, we need to go _now._ ” She turned and took Ben by the arm. “Come with me, I need to call my father, we’re going to get off of this kriffing planet immediately.”  
  
He pulled his arm free. “I’ll meet you with the others, there’s something I have to do.”  
  
“Are you-”  
  
“Yes! Yes I’m fine, go.”  
  
She paused to put a hand to his cheek. “Ben, be safe, I’ll see you soon.”  
  
Her father seemed none to surprised by the news, and if anything was irritatingly smug about it all.  
  
“When I said you were joining us, Teshik insisted on retrieving you as she had business on the Dyrian Way. She’s already in orbit- what a fortunate happenstance. And yes, of course Organa’s son can stay with us. He’d be better off here anyway, frankly this is going to be one of the best things that’s happened to him. You’ll be much happier here as well, you already know my feelings about that Jedi cult but I won’t rub it in all things considered. _Do_ remember to listen to your father more often, Shara, you could have avoided-”  
  
“Ugh, I’ll see you shortly.” She didn’t have time to hear her father stroke his ego and slammed the projector shut. When she emerged from her hut the temple was in flames.  
  
She dropped all her bags but the one with essentials and sprinted up the path to the stairs leading up to the blazing building. When she reached the top she saw Ben standing with the others, watching as flames licked the sky. He was mesmerized by the sight and jumped at the feeling of her throwing her arms around him.  
  
“Thank the stars, I was afraid you were in there.”  
  
He reached down and put his hands on her shoulders, staring at her intensely with a determined look in his eye she hadn't seen before. “The dark, the light- it doesn’t matter. Power is power, and now we’ll be free to learn whatever we want. The Jedi, the Sith, it’s all just rules for the sake of it. We’re free.”  
  
“We are.”  
  
_We weren’t,_ Kylo lamented. He walked into the flames, watching the temple burn from the inside out. Ancient Jedi tapestries burned to dust, the oil-cured wooden statues blazed white hot as they turned to carbon. A sparkle caught his eye, and as one of the statues crumbled a large kyber crystal fell to the floor. He narrowed his eyes at the strange occurrence- he had no knowledge of anything being hidden in them. When he knelt down to pick it up off the floor he was suddenly back outside the temple, crouched down behind his younger self.  
  
  
The roar of engines distracted him, and everyone looked up as a sleek black ship landed on the platform. The ramp descended and Baela Teshik strode down it, a smile so wide it threatened to crack her face. Behind her were… _stormtroopers?_  
  
The students were visibly surprised at the sight.  
  
“You look worried- don’t be. We’re here to help. Now come, it’s time to leave the past behind you. You’re safe now.” They were ushered into the ship where a medic waited to look everyone over. “You two, come with me, I want you to see something.” She lead Ben and Shara up to the large cockpit, and as the ship rose she leaned over the pilot’s shoulder, pointing to the burning temple.  
  
“I want you to blast that _slastaj_ into kriffing nothingness. _Now_ .” Shara took his hand and he squeezed it tight as the shuttle fired a barrage of lasers.    
  
The ion cannon fire was loud enough to bring Luke to consciousness, and a mechanized hand reached out from the rubble. By the time he’d lifted the rocks off him the ship was gone. All that was left was the raging fire, and bodies of fallen students cooling on the Dyneran stones.  
  
-  
  
“Follow me, you must be exhausted.” She lead them to the far side of the ship to a small room. “I sleep here when I travel, but you can take it for the night. I have work to tend to and won’t be resting for some time. You have a lot ahead of you tomorrow so do ensure that you’re properly rested. The others have cots set up below. Goodnight.” She smiled and stepped from the room, quickly closing the door behind her.  
  
Ben shuffled around, looking especially huge in the tiny room. “I’ll sleep on the floor, since there’s just the one bed.”  
  
“Ben, don’t be foolish.”  
  
He didn’t move and just stared at her dejectedly. She pulled the covers back and pushed him towards the bed. He finally laid down, curling into a ball against the wall. She slipped in beside him. “Turn around, come here. Please.” He rolled over and she could just make out his face in the dim light. She moved up the pillows to rest his face on her chest, brushing his hair back with her fingertips.  
  
Now that everything had stilled the depth of the situation sunk in, he was allowed to _feel_ what had happened; and above all he was absolutely crushed. She could feel him shake as he tried to hold back tears, and she wrapped her other arm around him, pulling him tight.  
  
“Everything is going to be alright, Ben. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”  
  
At this he sobbed into her robes, almost crushing her as he held her tight. “I-I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I’d do without you, I-” She shushed him and continued brushing his hair, doing her best to console him. She felt like she should be more disturbed by the situation than she was, and felt like a bad person for the small voice in her head that whispered _This is your victory over Luke._    
  
_That’ll teach you to send me away. Stop, this isn’t about you, selfish._  
  
“Luke wouldn’t have tried to kill me without a good reason, what if he’s right? What if I’m some dark, evil thing and-” he was silenced by her fingers on his lips.  
  
“Ben. Stop. There is _nothing_ wrong with you.” She moved his face up to look into his eyes. “I love you.”  
  
“I love you, too.”  
  
“And evil things can’t love, can they, so that makes your theory impossible. Now go to sleep.”  
  
“What is the point of this?” Kylo asked the dream, or whatever it was that was giving him these visions. “Why am I being showed this?”  
  
A form materialized beside him- it was Shara, but as the last time he saw her- face bloodied and bruised from a failed mission that signed her death warrant. She arched an eyebrow and managed a half smile despite the split in her lip. “You’d almost forgotten me, Kylo Ren, and now it’s time to remember.”  
  
Across the galaxy Rey was walking down the corridors to her quarters, when suddenly she felt a loneliness so potent it made her stagger, clutching the wall.  
  
  
-  
Gnarled fingers clasped together as the maimed face twisted into a hideous bastardization of a grin. The blue light of the small hologram projection blessedly blurred the depth of Snoke’s disgusting appearance as he addressed his apprentice.  
  
“You have done well, Baela. Thanks to you the heir of Vader will soon be mine. Bring him to me and you will have completed your training.”  
  
“And the girl?”  
  
“Yes, you can have the girl. Now go- the time will soon be upon us.”  
-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't intend for so much build up before the story of the knights started, but I would have felt like I was just jumping in head first otherwise.
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed it so far and thanks for sticking around! I'm really in love with this story and can't wait to get the next chapter up <3


	5. Coincidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben meets Snoke, Hux is being... well, Hux.

Hux frowned as he looked down at the sleeping man in front of him. Obsidian locks obscured his face, and the only sign that their Supreme Leader was alive was the soft movement of his hair as he exhaled. A small, sad little whimper escaped and the arm under his face twitched. If Hux had the capacity to feel sympathy he might have wondered what haunted his dreams, but instead, he just curled his lip in disdain.  
  
_Twitching like a dog in his sleep, ought to be put out of his misery like one._ _  
_ _  
_ He regretted bringing two officers in with him, fingers moving slightly at the thought of grabbing his blaster and making up for his hesitation in the throne room. No… he decided that when he finally _did_ kill Kylo Ren it would have to be without witnesses- and a lot more sly than simply blasting him in his sleep.  
  
“Ahem.” Nothing. Hux took his datapad and tapped it loudly on the desk, raising his voice. “Supreme Leader!”  
  
Kylo’s eyes shot open and he leapt to his feet, blinking rapidly as his brain struggled to register his surroundings.  
  
“You’ve been unresponsive for half the day, it’s almost noon. We were concerned. Should I escort you to the medical bay?”  
  
Hux was taken aback by the calm, somewhat small voice that replied. “No… No I’m alright, I’ve just had trouble sleeping.”  
  
The moment of vulnerability was short-lived, and as he came to, so did his anger. The eyes that glared into the General told him he’d pushed too far. He stalked around the desk, crowding the smaller man’s space.  
  
“Noon? And you just now think to come and see why I haven’t been responding? A rebel spy could have attacked me and left me for dead by now, or is that what you were hoping for?”  
  
Hux refused to step back but diverted his gaze to Kylo’s shoulder. “No, Supreme Leader, of course not, I- they, they didn’t notify me until just recently.” **  
**  
Kylo stood over him for a long moment more before returning to his chair, leaning back and draping his arms over the armrests. He swore he could still smell the temple burning, skin still pricked by the cold night air of a planet that was long gone.

“Find my first appointment for the day and send them to me. I will remain on schedule, merely delayed.”  
  
“Perhaps it would be helpful for me to assign you a secretary to help manage your daily routine I could-” Hux stopped at the feeling of a ghostly hand around his throat- not squeezing, but a signal to be silent.  
  
“That’s what I have _you_ for. See to it, and leave me.”  
  
Hux clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth might shatter under the pressure.  
  
“Of course… _Supreme Leader.”_ The way he mouthed the title would have been mistaken for a sacrilegious curse to someone who didn’t speak Basic. The tone wasn’t lost on Kylo, but he just wanted him gone and to go through the routine of the day, hoping that whatever news was brought to him would shake him free from the lingering grip of his dream.  
  
Unfortunately, it was the same tedious little issues, nothing interesting enough to stop his mind from wandering... until Captain Drasgan appeared before him yet again, looking noticeably more nervous than usual, and holding yet another kriffing rock.  
  
“As I’m sure you’re aware, most doonium sources were mined to non-existence during the Clone Wars. Our recycled supply from old vulture droids has gotten dangerously low, and if we’re to continue making the SF TIE fighters we’ll need more.” Slower, but much more highly powered than their regular TIE counterparts, the SF models had enough firepower to cause significant damage to Capital ships and could disintegrate an X-wing with just one bolt. With the faster TIE’s providing cover, they could be devastating when used properly.  
  
Kylo irritatedly summoned the rock from his hands, “And wherever this came from is going to be the answer to our problem, correct?”  
  
“Yes, Supreme Leader, sir, the planet is, ah,” he swallowed before continuing. “Dynera.”  
  
Kylo’s eyes shot up to his, a chill running through him. _“Dynera”,_ the response was a breath above a whisper.  
  
“Yes, sir, as you know, there’s, ah, superstitions, saying it’s a cursed planet. Well, I’m mineral enthusiast, and I collect various samples, and ah, I bought this off the holonet because I didn’t have anything Dyneran in my collection.”  
  
“So you were excited to get your hands on a haunted rock, is essentially what you’re telling me.”  
  
“Well, yes, sir, anything from that planet is incredibly hard to find.”  
  
Dynera was already a fairly isolated planet, just on the edge of the mid rim. It was why Luke had chosen it in the first place- it was a decent clip from traffic and distractions, as well as those out there that might wish ill on the rise of a new order of Jedi. When Luke Skywalker went missing it was the last known planet on which he had been seen. It was the disappearance of the galaxy’s most esteemed hero, combined with the destruction of the Jedi temple, that swirled a mixture of myth and merit around the planet. It was deemed cursed, haunted, said to have been poisoned by the dark side itself, and that all who dared venture to its surface would be driven into the depths of madness.  
  
“I wanted to verify its authenticity, and scans revealed that it’s not only genuine but quite high in doonium ore. I’d like to send some scouters out to-”  
  
“Do it. Notify me when your team is ready, I’ll be going with you.”  
  
“Supreme leader, sir, you really don’t have to-” his words were cut off as Kylo reached out and choked him.  
  
“I don’t _have_ to do _anything_ .” he snarled “I want to go, so I will go. Prepare your team. I have no further interest in anything you have to say until this has been done.”  
  
The unfortunate Captain fell to his knees, sputtering after Kylo released him. “Y-yes sir, as fast as I can sir, should be first thing tomorrow, Supreme Leader, Sir.” He hurried out and Kylo stared into the glittering stone before him.  
  
“This isn’t just coincidence… the dreams, this rock from Dynera… the Force is trying to show me something… ”  
  
His next appointment for the day came in and he leapt to his feet, no longer interested in the listening to bureaucratic ramblings or reports on things he couldn’t care less about. _Maybe Hux was right about getting an assistant._  
  
Hux.  
  
He would have to go too- Kylo knew what a cunning snake the man was, and any time he had to leave the ship he made sure to take the General with him. Calling their working relationship “strained” was a severe understatement, and Kylo knew Hux would assassinate him given a moment’s notice. One of the first things he did after leaving Crait was to locate the incriminating security footage from the Supremacy and destroy it. Despite the darkness of the throne room, he could make out very clearly the General’s hand slowly reaching for his blaster as Kylo laid unconscious on the floor.  
  
He couldn’t make the footage known, though, at risk of incriminating himself in Snoke’s death. This tidbit of knowledge was something he was keeping to himself till the time was right. Besides, his men had an (albeit begrudging) respect for the angry little orange man, and Kylo wasn’t entirely sure how loyal the First Order would be if he killed their General.  
  
Kylo burst into the General’s office to find him alone, typing away at his datapad. The heavy footfalls and the way he barged in unannounced already told Hux who was standing in front of his desk. He closed his eyes and sighed loudly, composing himself before looking up.  
  
“Supreme Leader, what can I do for you?”  
  
“The command shuttle. See to it that it’s prepared. You are accompanying me planetside on a scouting mission.”  
  
“A scouting mission?”  he asked incredulously. “You are aware that we have teams for that. Grubbing about in the dirt hardly requires someone of our station.”  
  
“We’re going to Dynera, and you’re coming with me. There is nothing more to discuss.”  
  
_Ah, so that’s it.  
  
_ “As you wish. I’ll see to it that preparations are taken care of, Supreme Leader.” he paused, placing a gloved index finger to his chin as if trying to recall something. “Tell me, do you know what exactly it was that transpired there? The famously “cursed planet”... so many different stories, all with wildly differing explanations.”  
  
Kylo’s eyes stared into his with somber intensity. “Don’t.”  
  
Hux heard it spoken in his mind just as much as his ears, and the weight that one simple word carried sent a shiver up his spine. He knew better than to press matters any further. Hux had been there from the beginning, and they both knew _damn_ well that he was aware of what _really_ happened there.  
  
  
  
He was only a Captain when they arrived. His father was absolutely smitten with Baela, primarily because she was the grand-daughter of one of the most famous Grand Admirals in the Empire’s history. Brendol Hux’ only true loves were power and prestige, _It’s why he cast my mother aside so easily_ he thought bitterly as he watched him puff his chest and try his absolute best to show off in front of the unsettling woman.  
  
They’d been discussing updates on the creation of the new TIE fighter model when a notification of her arrival came through on his datapad. Of course, his father insisted on being there to greet her. The younger Hux sighed, following behind his father as he hurried to the hangar, continuing to read out the report as they walked.  
  
Armitage narrowed his eyes at the sight of a small group of dusty figures in Jedi robes that followed her down the ramp. As they neared he saw two in very different black robes, one of which had an all-too familiar face. He still very distinctly recalled Senator Oshin’s daughter from his night on Chandrila. He had gone in place of his father and was proud that he was finally delegating some more important responsibilities to his son. Instead of making a name for himself though, he became an unwilling participant in the Jedi’s circus act.  
  
Brendol held out his hands in greeting. “Baela Teshik, it’s been quite some time! I didn’t know the Finalizer would be expecting your company.”  
  
She managed a tightlipped smile, addressing him without breaking her stride.  “I have urgent business with Snoke, Brendol, pleasantries will have to wait till later.”  
  
_Rude bitch._ _  
__  
_ Shara turned her head in Armitage’s direction at the thought, a flicker of recognition in her eyes before continuing on behind Baela.  
  
“Understood, understood, I’ll hold you to that later!” He clasped his hands as he watched her leave, leaning over to his son. “Now _that_ is a woman. You ever find yourself in the situation to land one of those by stars you better pull out all the stops.”  
  
_Ah yes, unlike my chopped liver kitchen maid of a mother, right you absolute pig?_ He swallowed back his loathing for his father before replying. “Ah, yes, well I wish I could schedule in time for such endeavors, but obviously we’ll soon have a war on our hands, so such... indulgences... will have to wait. Now if you’ll remember where we left off...”  
  
“Yes, yes, the EF fighter, sorry, you’ll have to refresh my memory.”  
  
_It was literally no more than ten minutes ago you braindead swine_ __  
  
“It’s the SF, and I suppose I can backtrack…”  
-  
  
They stared at each other in knowing silence before Kylo turned and left the room without another word. He returned to his quarters and quickly changed into something more comfortable. There was a large, black velvet floor pillow he used for meditation that he retrieved from underneath his bed. He sat down, levitating the rock above his bare hands, and he focused.  
  
The vibrations of the planet still reverberated throughout the stone, and the deeper he slipped into the force, the further his presence drifted from the physical plane.

_The force seems to be pulling me back to the planet, back to the start… back to her? Show me. Show me what you need me to see._

_  
_ It would appear that the force kept getting interrupted as it tried to work, as rather than show him anything specific it simply picked up near where his dream had been cut off.  
-  
  
Ben’s first impression of Snoke was revulsion- followed by an awe for the power the deformed creature held. His presence in the force was suffocating when they entered the giant throne room. Spindly arms with clawed hands clapped slowly, followed a raspy chuckle that was more growl than laugh.  
  
“Well done, Baela, well done. My, what lovely things you have brought for me.”  
  
She dropped to one knee and bowed her head while the students looked at each other, confused. “Master, Luke Skywalker is dead. I have delivered here, to you, the heir of Darth Vader as well as the last of the Jedi. They chose to seek power over sacrifice and followed the son of darkness to learn of your wisdom.”  
  
Snoke raised his eyebrows in surprise and rose to his feet. “You? Killed Skywalker?”  
  
“I did.” Ben stepped forward, holding his chin high. “My uncle feared the darkness in me, and like a coward he tried to kill me while I was sleeping, so I crushed him.”  
  
Snoke approached, mesmerized by the young man in front of him. Ben flinched, but didn’t move when he gently ran one clawed finger down his face. “But you don’t fear the darkness, do you Ben Solo, no you’ve embraced it. You’ve become what true masters wish to see in an apprentice; one that hungers for power, and isn’t afraid to use it. Magnificent.” His pale blue eyes turned their gaze to Shara, who was pressed to Ben’s side and watching Snoke like a hawk.  
  
Baela hadn’t moved from her kneeling position but responded as if she knew what he was thinking. “That is the young woman I spoke of, Master.”  
  
He reached out, lifted her chin, and smiled. “Ah, there’s never been a question in your spirit as to what you are. Nothing in the Jedi’s teachings would have allowed you to reach your full potential. Selfish, but focused. Driven by desire. He was wise to choose you as a companion, you will do well with us.” He released her and moved to run his eyes over the others that stood behind them.  
  
“The rest of you, you too came to find the strongest form of yourself, yes?” His gaze lingered on a few, and the room was deathly silent, the students afraid to even breathe. “Some of you, sadly, will not make it. The training ahead will be difficult. It will tear you down, destroying the weak creature that the Jedi’s feeble teachings have built, and rebuild you anew. If you wish to leave, now is the time. Simply say so.”  
  
Two of the younger students, brothers, raised their hands sheepishly. “Sir, we’d just like to go home, please.”  
  
“Anyone else?” the rest stood silent. “Alright, Baela. Escort them.”  
  
She rose silently and motioned for them to come with her. They followed her down the dark, winding halls till she stopped abruptly, bringing them into what looked like a room for repurposing droids. She reached beneath her cloak to retrieve a lightsaber holstered on her lower back, and with a flourish they both fell to the floor before they could even cry out. She snapped her fingers and pointed to the bodies.  
  
“Droids. Garbage chute.” And with that she returned to the throne room.  
  
After more of Snoke enjoying listening to himself speak, the students renounced the Jedi code and swore loyalty to their new master. They were escorted to their own private chambers on one of the lower levels, secluded from the rest of the First Order soldiers. The rooms had already been prepared, closets filled with simple black robes and other basic items they might need. Shara was glad to see her father had some of her things brought from Chandrila, and opened one of the trunks to see the chip Baela had given her so long ago was sitting on top.  
  
The thought that she might actually get to use some of the things she’d read about was absolutely thrilling.  The doors behind her opened and she shoved it back underneath some clothing, turning around to see Ben behind her.  
  
“This was a lot more than I expected, Ben, Baela never told me anything about this.”  
  
“This is _better_ than expected.” He took her hands in his. “There has been power in me, in you, that Luke would never have taught us to reach. You saw it in me too. You never doubted me, not even once."  
  
She squeezed his hands and stepped closer "Of course not. I've always believed in you Ben, you know this."  
  
"I believed in you too, despite everything. We both knew that there had to be more than just the rules of the Jedi, more than what we were allowed to see. Snoke will teach us how to be unstoppable. You and I both know first hand how corrupt and useless the Senate is. This new order he talked about will help save the galaxy from itself.”  
  
  
  
_But at what cost?_ Kylo whispered. He wasn’t entirely sure the galaxy wanted to be saved- and at this point, he no longer really cared to try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Anyone watch Breaking Bad? "My MiNeRaLs" lmao )
> 
> A little short in comparison to my other chapters, I know, but it was going to be way longer otherwise :P The next chapter really couldn't be split up! Will have it fresh baked for you soon
> 
> Feel free to comment n let me know what you think, kind criticism welcome <3


	6. Freedom of Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Get a bit of adult content (other than murdering) 
> 
> Snoke starts to reveal how horrid he is, and things are about to pick up.
> 
> Thank you for following along, comments and kudos give me life, and (kind) criticisms are welcome!

It had been only three days since leaving the academy in ashes.

 

The students now started their days with grueling physical training that began in the early hours of the morning, followed by a short break, and then on to introductory classes about the First Order and how it functioned; but nothing in the way of force related training. It was like Snoke was waiting for something, keeping them in a holding pattern. He sent for them from the throne room every day, asking about Luke, his training methods, how it was they saw themselves in the force and other strange esoteric questions... but nothing more. Ben and Shara were both growing impatient.  
  
After finishing lunch early the pair dipped away and wandered the ship. Soldiers and officers alike paid them no attention and they moved through the corridors as if they were invisible. Whether it was because they were ordered not to, or because the wayward students simply weren’t relevant, they didn’t know. While exploring the lower levels they came across a large overseer’s room that looked out across the repair bay. It was still hard for them to wrap their minds around just how _massive_ the ship was. The New Republic only had a handful of ships that rivaled the size of a Star Destroyer, and neither of them had set foot on one.

 

“You know my father’s company is responsible for the heat sinks in the TIE’s, I’d bet every ship on that floor has something from Oshin Industrial in it.”  
  
“So that explains the manifest forging on Bakura then.”  
  
“Not because it’s _illegal_ , but because the New Republic is too nosy. No respect for corporate autonomy. Not our fault we have to blur the lines a little to live in peace.”  
  
It sounded like something his father would say. He fought daily to push his parents from his mind, but there seemed to be reminders of them everywhere. With so much going on he hadn’t discussed the events on the planet at all, and he wondered how long they could pretend it didn’t happen. Ben didn’t want to spend his waking hours talking about on Dynera anyways,  as the topic already consumed his nights. Luke’s green saber split through his dreams- sometimes Ben awoke in a sweat, clawing at his chest to feel for the burn of a saber impaled through him. Sometimes he’d awaken on the planet, looking for Shara- but instead, he’d find Luke and his parents casually discussing how it would probably be best to just murder the grandson of Darth Vader, _just_ to be on the safe side. He found himself longing for the nightmares of fire and destruction instead.  
  
Before he could change the subject she continued on.

  
“Actually… my father has obligations on the Senate floor for the next couple of days.” She could feel him tense up beside her.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“If you want he could-”  
  
“No.”  
  
“So you’re not going to tell her what he did, what-”  
  
“No! I’m not! You hate my mother anyway, so I don’t see why you care.”  
  
“I do, but you don’t.”  
  
“Don’t tell me how I feel!” he closed his eyes and sighed when Shara shrank back at the harshness of his tone. “She’s in the past... all of _that..._ is in the past. They mean nothing to me. She kept the secret of Darth Vader from me all those years, for all I know Luke told her what he was planning. She could have been in on it, maybe she even told him… told him to…” he swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.  
  
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry… it’s just… we haven’t really spoken about what happened, and-”  
  
“You were there, you saw it,” he snapped, “ What is there to talk about?”  
  
Not wanting to push anymore, and not entirely sure what to say, she just tentatively slid her hand down to his waist and leaned against him. His gaze was riveted to the repair floor, lips pursed in a straight line. Speaking about them would give the events more life, and it wasn’t something he wanted to address- now or ever, really. That, and he felt a little guilty about what happened by the river. He realized he’d pushed her away once, and he didn’t want to do it again. He put his arm around her shoulders and could feel some of the tension dissipate.  
  
“Shara, I’m just so much all at once. I’m sad, happy, excited, worried, nervous, I feel like I can’t just _be_ , and I don’t know how to put it into words. I’m so frustrated, and I don’t know what to say.”  
  
“Then don’t say anything.”  Shara could feel him collapsing into himself and stepped between him and the glass, forcing him to look at her. “We did what we had to do. All that matters is that we’re here now. If something’s bothering you, don’t think you have to deal with it alone. I’ll be here for you, always.” 

 _Always._ She was the one constant he had. He bit his lip and looked down as he took her hands in his, so small in comparison.  
  
“I, um, I  meant what I said, it wasn’t just the heat of the moment,” his voice was almost a whisper.  
  
“When you said what?”  
  
“That I loved you.”  
  
“I meant it too.” He looked back up at her to see blue eyes staring back so genuine, so honest.  
  
“I know you did.”

He’d conditioned himself to immediately feel shame at any thoughts of attraction to her and anything else that would go against the Jedi code held over their heads. His gaze moved to her soft pink lips and he realized that he didn’t have to do that anymore. He knew that the feeling was mutual, and as if she could hear his thoughts she stepped closer, tilting her face up leaning into him ever so slightly.  
  
The moment was interrupted by the whoosh of the mechanized doors behind them. Baela Teshik drifted into the room like a spectre and they both jumped apart, Ben running his fingers through his hair and Shara straightening her robes, trying (and failing) to look casual.  
  
“Sorry to interrupt, I’ve been looking for you.” A knowing smile crept across her face as she addressed them. “If you don’t mind, Ben, I’d like a moment alone with my niece.” He nodded and glanced awkwardly at Shara before leaving the room. She strode to stand beside her, looking out onto the work floor.  
  
“No matter how many times you see it, and no matter how old you get, it never ceases to amaze.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“The way people can fit together so perfectly, some grand design setting the teeth of a hundred gears and the edges of a thousand facets to perfectly complement each other.” Baela nodded to the hangar floor. “The perfect machine. Sometimes I come up here just to get lost in it all. When my own machinations aren’t going as planned it’s helpful to watch the success of others to remind myself that it’s still possible. I need that now more than ever.”  
  
“Is something wrong?”  
  
“I’ve hit a bit of an obstacle on some research I’m doing. Being the only force sensitive has made my work slow going.”  
  
Shara licked her lips nervously and stared intensely at the workers below, worried about where the conversation was going.  
  
“I’m leaving tomorrow… someone of your talents would be very useful.”  
  
“I’m beyond flattered that you would ask me, but I can’t leave Ben, and with Snoke-”  
  
“He wants to train Ben, Shara. That mighty Skywalker blood-  he’s not very interested in anyone else. He doesn’t see in you what I see.  That data chip I gave you the last time we met, that was only a fraction of what I know. I gave it to _you_ because even then I knew what you were capable of.” Which wasn't  _entirely_ a lie. She was hoping to snake Ben out from under Snoke even back then but saw it wasn't going to work.   
  
Her heartbeat quickened, starting to feel like she didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.  “I misspoke, Miss Teshik, I _won’t_ leave Ben would be the proper phrasing. I brought him here and I can’t just abandon him. We work better together, Snoke will see that. ”  
  
Baela laughed softly, reining in her growing frustration. ‘ _I want a loyal student, not to forge a weapon of my own demise’_ she reminded herself.  She had decided long ago that when she took an apprentice it would be of their own free will, not the way Snoke had forcefully snatched her away.  
  
“It wouldn’t be forever, dear, only a week or so, but I can appreciate your dedication to your… _friend.”_ She raised an eyebrow, emphasis on the end of her sentence. “Tell me, are you two, ah…”  
  
“We’re _friends,_ he was my teacher on Dynera, I, um, we’re very close. Close friends.” Shara nearly choked at the insinuation, pale cheeks blushing a bright red as she sputtered, the awkwardness of her response only making her more embarrassed.  
  
“Oh… oh _dear_ ,”  she drawled, almost mockingly.  “Well that’s a pity, it’s his loss. Do think on my offer though.” She nodded and left a very flustered young woman alone with her thoughts.  
  
-  
“She doesn’t want to leave! She’s fixated on your pet, something that will be just as inconvenient for _you_ and you know it.” Baela was pacing at the foot of Snoke’s throne, venting her displeasure with the situation.  
  
“You are her master now, you give orders not requests.”  
  
“I don’t want our relationship to begin under such circumstances.”  
  
“ _Stop that idiotic pacing!_ ” He held up his hand and she froze mid-step.”If I had given _you_ a choice, you wouldn’t be here now. You are grateful that I did, are you not? She will be too, in time; you will _make_ her be.” He released her and she exhaled slowly before turning to him.  
  
“Yes, master, I understand that, but he is attached to her as well. Stealing her away wouldn’t bode well for either of us.”  
  
Snoke rubbed his chin with a gnarled finger. “Yes, yes I can sense that. I don’t need her presence, or her absence, distracting him. Continue preparing for your departure. By tomorrow she will want to leave of her own accord, I can see it.”  
  
“Thank you, Supreme Leader.” Baela bowed low and left the room with a flourish of robes. It had taken years for her to build walls strong enough, and a box inside herself small enough, to hide her hatred for her master. Yes, she relished the power she had and was grateful for it, but it wasn’t just that he snatched her from her family; Snoke was a cruel, sadistic creature. She would have shared her stories with Shara to frighten her into leaving, but it would only make her worry for her companion that much more.

-

 

As he had done the few days prior, Snoke summoned them in the late afternoon, but this time Baela was standing to the right of the throne. Shara wondered if she’d spoken with Snoke, anxiety more than anger tightening her throat. She realized she was too afraid of Baela to really be angry with her. The last time she’d felt that kind of fear was with Luke, and bitterness rose at the memory.  
  
Snoke had a few mundane questions about how they were getting along with their other business, and then he finally got onto what was clearly on his mind. There was an unpleasant smirk on his face as he motioned to Ben.  
  
“I understand you taught your companion at the temple. Show me.”  
  
“I, um, I don’t understand what you’re asking.”  
  
“Come closer and spar. In earnest.” The pair exchanged nervous glances and moved a few meters away from the foot of the throne, taking their stances, and began. A few minutes in Snoke held up both of his hands with a huff.  
  
“Enough dancing. I said in _earnest._ Like you’re trying to prove something.”  
  
They began again, and when Snoke still wasn’t satisfied he leaned forward, flicks of his wrists pushing at them as they fought. He’d nudge Ben off balance, her saber coming close enough to graze him. Shara could feel a pull at her wrist when she blocked, his blade sliding up, the heat of it almost singing her knuckles.  
  
“I’m waiting to be impressed and you’re both _failing._ ” He yelled out over the clashing of their blades. His negging worked; frustration with themselves and annoyance with Snoke bled into their fighting. They almost forgot who they were fighting as he continued antagonizing them.  
  
“You denounced the order, so why is it _Jedi_ that I see fighting before me?” The last taunt was just enough to tip the scales in Ben’s chest, teeth bared as his anger took over.  
  
He knew she would block his backhanded swing with two upright blades, deflecting up to her shoulder to side-step. He faked slightly, going deeper than he usually would, using both hands to hold his blade perfectly horizontal. The leverage from stepping lower allowed him to push up much harder than she expected.  
  
He immediately felt guilty at the look on her face as he shoved forward with all his weight and sent her flying backward, sabers clattering to the floor. Still caught in the moment, he loomed above her, panting as she winced and rubbed the back of her head where it hit the metal floor.  
  
The sound of Snoke’s clapping broke the hold of his anger and he holstered his saber, reaching a hand down to help her up. Snoke looked over to Baela, and without making eye contact she left the room, some unspoken message exchanged between them.  
  
“You both did well, very well. Now leave us. I’m done with you for the evening. But you,” he pointed at Ben. “You stay.”  
  
Shara put a hand on his shoulder, letting him know she was alright before leaving with her head down. She was afraid her failure had made Snoke think she was useless, that she wasn’t relevant enough to stay. As she filed out with the other students she wanted to lash out, perhaps pretend one of them shoved her and unleash her fury on them, maybe buying another chance to prove herself in combat.  
  
_No, don’t embarrass yourself more than you already have._  
  
She stormed back to her quarters, snatching up the dark side data chip. With a much greater understanding and grasp on the force than she had back then, the information it held would be much more useful to her now. If she couldn’t impress Snoke with her physical strength, maybe she could flex her power in other areas.

-

  
“Anger is a powerful thing, Ben Solo. Have you called on it to serve you before?”  
  
“I’m, um, not entirely sure.”

Snoke continued prodding, and Ben could gather from his line of questioning that there was much more to the force than Luke had let on.  He laughed at the young man’s ignorance, being slightly condescending as he spoke.

“Now you have a teacher that embraces the darkness in you, young Solo, and the only limitations to what you can achieve will be your own shortcomings.”

  
It was just the beginning of Snoke’s mental manipulation. Rather than being outright rude it was gentle derision- more of a disappointed tone than anything. Eager to please their new master, this behavior would inspire the fallen Jedi students to try harder in the trials to come. Ben more than anyone was determined to do everything he could. Every compliment Snoke gave was slightly backhanded, every praise followed by criticism, demanding more and more.

For years, though, Ben would find that even in the darkness he still wasn’t enough for his master; but at this point he still had hope, and Snoke used that as a tool of his own.  
  
“Baela Teshik has been my apprentice for many years, and now it is time for her to take her own. She has chosen your young friend but she refuses to leave your side. Of course, we won’t make any of you do something you don’t want to, all I will do is ask you this; she has helped you before, yes? Now it is your time to help her. You are both very similar but every journey into the force is unique to each individual. You may walk these paths closely, but to stay together is to impede the other’s progress. Baela is talented and better suited to train your friend than I, but I will teach you in ways that are beyond her abilities. Think not just of your friend, but of yourself as well.  
  
It was a long, painful journey that brought you to me, young Solo. It wouldn’t be fair- and I dare say it would be an injustice to you, should you not make the absolute most of what I offer. You didn’t struggle all those years to have it amount to merely _“good enough_ .”  
  
Ben chewed his lip and nodded, “Yes, master, I understand.” He didn’t want to be alone on a strange ship without her, but a lot of what Snoke said rang true. She’d done a lot for him, and even in their short time there he’d noticed the change in her, the dark side allowing her to become stronger than he’d ever thought possible on Dynera. He’d also been through so much- even killed his own uncle, to get him to where he was. Any daydreams of escaping his mantle of power were gone- he had to embrace it and make the most of it.  
  
He’d simply done too much not to.  
  
Hux was waiting impatiently just outside the doors to meet with the Supreme Leader; it was already fifteen minutes past the time he was supposed to be seen. Distracted by his own mind, Ben ran smack into him as he burst through the doors, sending the smaller man backward and datapads flying in every direction.  
  
“Kriff! So you’re why I’m behind schedule? Next time see to it that you’re finished before the hour strike and try not to tackle anyone for fucksake.”  
  
“Sorry,” Ben mumbled and continued on down the corridor.  
  
“Can you lot at least _pretend_ you’re civilized?” Hux called out, angrily retrieving his fallen datapads. Ben didn’t really like interacting with the soldiers anyway, and their feelings were the last thing he cared about at the moment.  
  
Hux huffed and straightened his uniform, striding into the room with his head held high, the completed plans for the SF-TIE fighters under his arm… as well as the blueprints for his own personal project; Starkiller Base.  
  
His technological mastery was responsible for a majority of the most cutting-edge weapons of the First Order, and Snoke was always interested in what he was working on. However,  he’d all but vanished since the fallen Jedi students arrived, and Hux couldn’t admit to himself he was a little put out by it.  
-  
After dinner, the students retired for the evening.  Ben couldn’t sleep so he invited Shara to his quarters to talk. As they sat on the foot of his bed the conversation was stilted, like he was holding something back. She’d hoped he would open up regarding Dynera, but as distant as he’d been the rest of the day she had feeling she knew  _exactly_ what it was about. In the middle of a conversation about focusing crystals, he finally blurted out what was on his mind.  
  
“Maybe you should do it.”  
  
“Should do what?”  
  
“Go with Miss Teshik. You said yourself at dinner that it wouldn’t be for long. Remember our talks by the river? We always felt like we were being held back by the Jedi code. We’re free now, and we shouldn’t let ourselves be what’s holding us back.”  
  
“Do you think I’d _hold you back?”_  
  
“No! It’s just, we’ve always been a little different in how we do things. I think this would be good for both of us. I’ll see you again, and we can still message each other through the holonet… I’m just trying to help.”  
  
Part of him hoped she wouldn’t leave, but  Snoke’s words echoed in his head- he didn’t want his suffering to be for nothing, and he wanted to realize the full potential of his power; he wanted _all of it._ It was time for Shara to go off on her own too, he’d decided. The dark side was a whole new arena and he was now just as much a student as her. He couldn’t help her anymore, but Baela could. And in time, when they came back to each other, they could share what they’d learned.  
  
_It’s for the best, it’s for both of us._  
  
She wondered now if maybe she was suffocating him, or being overbearing, or maybe it wasn’t so much that she was concerned for him- which she was- but maybe _she_  was afraid of being alone.  
  
“Did she speak with you?”  
  
“No, Snoke said something about wanting to personally train me, but only me, that he couldn’t train us both. You deserve this. We’re finally in a place where we don’t have to worry about light and dark, about anything but ourselves. We deserve to be selfish and take what we’ve earned. We’re...  _free_ .” He hung on that last sentence after it left his lips, the weight of those words sinking into him.  
  
Shara stood abruptly, refusing to look at him as she spoke. “Well, Baela’s to leave early in the morning, so in case I don’t get to say goodbye I’ll go ahead and say it now, then.”  
  
He rose, shaking his head as he looked down at her, grabbing her by the hips to stop her from turning to leave. The intimacy of his grasp threw her off for a moment and she froze.  
  
“We’re free, Shara.” She was so upset at the idea of leaving that she didn’t get the insinuation till he took one hand and gently lifted her chin to face him. He bit his lower lip, soft brown eyes staring down at her with an intensity that lit a fire in her stomach. Her eyes went wide and her pulse quickened at the realization of what he meant, what she _hoped_  he meant.  
  
Her voice was a split above a whisper as she breathed his name, “ _Ben…”_  
  
They stood, suspended for a fraction of a second before crashing into each other. He grabbed her face in both hands, his mouth covering hers as she stood on her tip-toes to meet him. He moved till the back of his knees hit the edge of the bed; strong arms wrapped around her waist and he fell back onto the bed, taking her with him.  
  
She felt like it was all a dream.  
  
“I… want… you… I’ve always… wanted… you,”  he breathed a word every time their mouths parted to gasp for air. She moaned into his mouth at the admission and the sound twisted something in his chest, a need hungrier than anything he’d known suddenly awake. In one smooth motion, he rolled her over onto her back, covering her smaller frame with his own. 

  
Their night clothes were fairly thin, and she moaned again at the feeling of the hard bulge as he pressed his hips into her. She kissed down his jaw, pulling him tight to nuzzle his ear with another soft sound as he ground into her.  
  
_“I want  you to take me... please Ben… oh stars...please.”_  
  
He mumbled something that was more breath than words, hands doing the talking as he desperately pulled her top free. There was a moment of fumbling as they got undressed, but as soon as their clothes were tossed aside she pulled him back to her, wrapping her legs around his waist. He was already leaking as he pressed into her, and she whimpered at the size of him.  
  
“I- I don’t want to hurt you.”  
  
“You’re not, just, just go slow.” He hid his face in the soft curve of her neck, panting as he pushed in slowly, pulling back a little before pushing in deeper. Every gasp from her made his hips twitch, begging for more.  After what felt like eons he was finally seated wholly inside her, the stretch of being so full with him simultaneously pleasure and pain.  
  
_“Shara, please, I… I need to move.”_  
  
The heat of her was too much, and the want that coiled in his gut was a tightly wound spring needing release. She pushed him back to breathlessly nod _yes_ before pressing her lips to his.  
  
He tried to move at a gentle pace, but it wasn’t long before he was pushing into her in short, fast thrusts. The change in pace was met with high-pitch keening, but her hips moved to meet his; hands clawing at his lower back urging him on.  
  
“ _Oh, oh_ _stars… Ben….”_  
  
_“I’m, I’m going to-”_  
  
_“I want you to, I want you- ah!”_ The force seemed to connect them, immersing them in the other’s climax as much as their own. He could feel her tighten around him as she cried out and he rested his forehead on her shoulder, growling through clenched teeth as he came, filling her with everything he had to give.  
  
For some time the only sound in the room was the catching of breath as they came back down. He lifted his head to look at her, one hand brushing a lock of golden hair from her face.

 _“Will you stay with me tonight?”_  
  
_“Yes.”_  
  
He slept with his arm over her, her back curled into him as he held her close, snuggled beneath a plush comforter as they slept. Even in her sleep she clutched his arm, like if she let go she’d wake up alone, all of this being nothing more than the indulgence an overactive imagination. He woke a few times throughout the night but not because of nightmares, but to make sure she was still beside him.  
  
  
  
Neither would be that content or that peaceful again for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> “Skywalker lives!” 
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am writing it. I apologize for it taking so long, I redid this chapter like a million times and I'm still not very confident in my smuttish writing abilities :P


	7. 2300

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben & Shara go their separate ways, the darkness finally beginning its much-awaited ascent
> 
> cw: Mentions of torture, nothing graphic, just emotional distress

The morning was filled with lingering touches and heartfelt goodbyes before Shara found herself walking up the ramp to the small freighter. As the Finalizer shrank to nothingness in the distance, the air seemed to grow colder around her. Whether that was because she already missed her friend, one she hadn’t been apart from more than a handful of days for the past few years, or because dread was settling in, she wasn’t sure.  
  
An officer piloted the vessel to meet Baela’s ship deep in the outer rim. From what Shara understood, she was going to assist in the recovery of artifacts while learning more about the dark side of the force. She had no idea what Baela and Snoke truly had in mind. After standing beside her in silence, Baela turned to the young woman beside her.  
  
“Well, my young _apprentice,_ the journey ahead won’t be easy, but you will come through the other side of your training as an unstoppable thing. I dare say you might, with time, become even stronger than myself.”  
  
“ _Apprentice?_ I was under the impression we would only be gone for a few weeks and then I’d return to the ship.”  
  
“We will come and go, I wasn’t untruthful. Snoke will be investing all of his time in your companion, leaving you without a teacher. I have decided I will take on that responsibility, and I will be your master from here on out, is that understood?”  
  
She felt tricked, but Ben _had_ mentioned that Snoke was only interested in _him_. “Yes...”  
  
“Yes what?”  
  
“Yes, master.” Shara respected her, but just the slightest tinge of resentment hung on the end of the word… and Baela smiled so briefly before her thin lips turned down into a grimace.  
  
“There will be secrets revealed to you, secrets that must stay between us. Can you promise that?”  
  
“Yes, master.”  
  
“Let us not begin our new relationship on a _lie.”_ _  
_ _  
_ “I-what? I won’t, ah!!” Baela’s hand snaked out and forced her to her knees as what felt like a thousand cracks split across her temple.  
  
“If secrets can be taken, they can’t be kept, can they?” The fractures across her mind unified into one spike, a physical pain stabbing into the center of her brain while the essence of her being felt as if it were in an electrical storm. Memories flickered before her eyes and Baela lazily tilted her head to the side as she watched her new apprentice suffer. “Are you even going to _try_ to keep me out?”  
  
_“I don’t… know… how…”_  
  
“Well I _do_ hope you figure it out.” The memories were innocuous things at first, but Baela quickly went for the most sensitive things she could.  
  
Shame at the memory of her mother looking down at her with disdain, _Why couldn’t you have been a boy? I’m tired of your pig of a father mounting me like he can just shove a son in my belly.  
_ Embarrassment at how most of the other senator’s children shunned her for her family’s role in supporting the Empire.  
The way she sobbed into her pillow the first night on Dynera, absolutely appalled at the desolate new life at the austere temple.  
How, after becoming infatuated with the young Solo, her hands would slip beneath the sheets in her hut as she bit her lip to keep her whimpers quieter than the crickets.  
And then, as if she couldn’t be more mortified; Baela pulled forth a whisper, _Please, I need to move..._ That was a memory for her, no one else, and it was a protective, jealous fury that finally shoved the intruder from her mind.  
  
_“No!”_ Was all she managed to cry out as her anger wrapped like a tentacle around that spike, crushing it into nothingness.  
  
“How precious. Love may have served you well just now but don't be fooled; it's a crippling weakness. Attachment to another is a pressure point that you cannot control... but that is a lesson for a much later time. You’re nowhere near being able to understand it; at least... not _yet_.” Her hand remained clawed out and Shara was panting as she glared up at her new master. “Congratulations, though, by the way,” she winked, “About time.”  
  
The thought flickered across her mind of leaping to her feet, lunging up, and clawing the smug grin off the woman’s face. She immediately tried to stuff it down, hoping her new master didn’t sense it.  
  
“Tsk-tsk, Shara. You have no one to blame for this but yourself- perhaps next time you’ll be more successful about hiding your secrets.”  
  
“You’ve had years more training than me, how am I supposed to keep you out of my mind!?” She hated the unintentional whine to her tone, but she felt helpless.  
  
“Can’t even pay attention for your first lesson? Perhaps I should have tried harder to take your friend for myself instead. I said _hide your secrets,_ nothing about keeping me out of your mind. I’ll leave you to meditate on that while I relieve the pilot for a bit.”  
  
Despite moving away she held Shara in place, porcelain knees bruising on the cold durasteel floor just behind the cockpit. Baela could feel the swirling maelstrom of emotions, quite pleased when she felt them all slowly solidify into one: determination.  
  
_I knew I chose well._ _  
_ _-_   
  
“You chose well in sending her away, my young apprentice. I am proud of you for putting your focus on the future rather than hiding in the familiar comfort of trappings of the past. It shows me that you are truly ready to embrace your potential and put yourself first.”  
  
“Yes, Master.” Ben nodded, knelt down one knee. The other students were noticeably absent, and he wondered if they too had been sent off on their own different journeys. His voice sounded hollow as it echoed in the virtually empty room, a cavernous space with no decor aside from the throne and lights angled up towards the ceiling. It wasn’t just that Shara was gone, as even before her students were constantly nearby. It was the first time in years that Ben had felt a loneliness more complex than being misunderstood.  
  
“The others that followed you are still here, but their training will be… different. They will be shaped into the tools you need to achieve your destiny; there is no need for you to concern yourself with them quite yet. Now please, sit, let us get better acquainted.” Snoke wanted to know every detail of every facet of his life to better control his new apprentice, and he wanted to start with what hurt the most. “Tell me about your mother…”  
  
“I thought she loved me, but she was afraid of me. They all were… I see that now.”  
  
“Should they have been?”  
  
His gut reaction was 'No',  but as his mind worked his face darkened. He looked up at his new master, some of his usual awkwardness gone from his tone.  
  
“Yes.”  
-

  
Luke had focused more on the living force inside one’s self and how it was a Jedi’s responsibility to commune with the light. They were told to channel their power through virtuous acts and living to help the galaxy. Snoke and Baela taught their eager disciples that the force was as much an implement as they themselves were. The force became weaponized; something that could be summoned, stoked, and simmered, its strength manipulated to great heights and harnessed… and turned inwards rather than out.  
  
Ben & Shara messaged back and forth every night while they were separated to their own trainings. Shara’s very first lesson hit home, though, and she felt somewhat guilty for leaving out some of the stories of her teachings; it was specifically the planets they went to and the things they retrieved that were to remain unsaid. Baela wasn’t needlessly cruel, but she wasn’t kind, either. For all her talk of passion and the power of emotion, she instilled the importance of compartmentalization in her student, demanding her to break off a fragment of herself to forever keep aloof, cold, and unfeeling. It was intrinsically against Shara’s nature, and this attempt at breaking her was one of the things that would make her so unstable in the future.  
  
Snoke would have the same failure in Ben, stoking the dark while demanding part of him stay open to the light. He believed that the darkness was the path to greater power, but to achieve the pinnacle of his potential he had to be willing and able to draw on the light side too. The forced coexistence felt like it was tearing him apart, light and dark recoiling from each other while he struggled to keep them under control.  
  
Both Masters were unknowingly creating their own destruction.  
  
While Snoke focused on power; how to take the already bountiful blessing of strength he had in the force and use the darkness to work it into a frenzy, Baela focused on manipulation; how the force could be bent and woven like an art form. While the pair shared the wisdom of their masters, both kept secrets from the other. There were certain things that Baela would pause before teaching, telling her, “This is to stay between us” touching a finger to her lips. Shara was paranoid that she would know if she told Ben, so she was true to her master’s request and didn’t say a word. Eventually, she would just raise a finger to her lips before continuing, and then the gesture turned into a small flick of her index finger, indicating that what she was about to say was a secret.  
  
Though typically derisive of the Sith, Snoke told Ben of the sense behind the Rule of Two. “Knowledge is power; if everyone has that knowledge, there is no power in it. Power is not as simple as merely being strength, but knowing things that others do not. This is why I train you separately from the other students; to consolidate your dominion over them. This is why there are some things you will not pass on.” Snoke leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “To _anyone._ ” The image of Shara’s face smiling up at him flickered across his mind; the fear that followed it was because it was projected there by Snoke.  
  
_He knows._  
  
Ben's finger hovered over the holopad as he typed up his evening message to his friend; rather than continue on to cover all of his training, he instead ended it abruptly with “I miss you, may the force be with you.”  
  
And so it went, even after, much to Shara’s disapproval, a few weeks stretched into months.

  
  
It was six months to the day she left that the messages stopped.

  
  
She was sleeping, the soft blue glow of the data pad weakly illuminating her face as she startled awake. She had accidentally slipped into slumber while waiting for a response. A quick glance at the time told her it was 0700; she should have heard from him at least ten hours ago.  
  
  
  
“Something’s wrong!”  
  
Baela looked up from translating one of the many ancient texts they’d recently stolen from a temple on a remote planet, leaning back out of the desk lamp’s focused beam to stare at her wild-eyed apprentice from shadow. “Explain.”  
  
“Ben didn’t respond to my message last night.”  
  
She sighed. “I can appreciate what a resourceful tool your ego has been to you, dear apprentice, but in your arrogance have you not considered that perhaps he has outgrown you? Use this as a learning opportunity and examine where you yourself have failed in your studies, that he has reached this point before you.”  
  
Shara dug her nails into the flesh of her palm, taking a moment to think before responding. It had been beaten into her to provide logical reasoning for everything she felt and did or Baela wouldn't take her seriously.  
  
“Our relationship is mutually beneficial. He shares what he learns under Snoke, and I tell him _some_ things that you have been teaching me. He would at least explain to me why there was no reason for us to talk anymore.”  
  
Even after she eventually returned to him, after he himself had ruthlessly split into the corners of her mind, Shara had never told Kylo Ren what exactly her and Baela did those months apart. He walked through the vision to the cluttered desk as they spoke and he could smell the ancient resins used to cure the papers she was translating. Everything was so _real._ He was aware that the ill-fated master and her apprentice were retrieving Sith artifacts, but she had never specified what. At the time, he was honestly too distracted to care.  
  
The dagger-like runes of High Sith outlined detailed images, showing what appeared to be a Sith Lord severing their victim’s connection to the force. The next page showed yet another where, in a much more elaborate setting, they appeared to be absorbing the force from their victims and draining it into themselves. Kylo narrowed his eyes as he began to read. His understanding of High Sith was rudimentary, but it was enough to catch his interest.  
  
_What were you doing, Baela?_ _  
_ _  
_ The vision didn’t respond, though, only answering Shara’s question with another question.  
  
“Do you have reason and evidence past hurt little feelings to explain why something is, as you say, _wrong?_ No? Then do not interrupt me again,” she snapped, leaning back into the light and over the crumbling texts. By now Shara had learned that was a dismissal, and that trying to stay after being dismissed came with harsh consequences. She simply nodded and turned to storm down the hallway of their small ship back to her quarters.  
  
Kylo lingered above the desk,  hoping the vision might show him more of the book. Instead, the scene dissolved into scalding heat and black stone, the haunting smell turning his stomach. The memory of that night still twisted his heart with fear, feeling very much like he was still that same naive young man that entered the castle that night. Snoke had given him strict orders not to tell anyone where he was going and to leave all technology on his shuttle; it was just to be him and his saber. He felt badly for not telling Shara, but figured she’d be alright missing a night of correspondence.  
  
Much of Snoke’s more recent teachings had come from a hologram as he had been traveling, though Ben wasn’t privy to where or why. After a week of absence, he told his young apprentice to meet him on Mustafar to experience the darkness that still reverberated in the crumbling remains of Vader’s castle. He had been told so little about his grandfather from his family and was thrilled to find out that a part of his legacy still stood. He walked through the black granite-walled hallways in awe, following the pull of Snoke’s presence. He found him in a large control room overlooking the river of lava below. He didn’t turn when Ben entered the room, instead speaking over his shoulder.  
  
“Do you know why I have brought you here?”  
  
“No, master.”  
  
“This planet was where your grandfather embraced his destiny and truly became Darth Vader. He battled against and ultimately rejected his old master, completing his transformation. Do you know what this has to do with you?”  
  
“No, master.”  
  
Snoke spun around faster than he’d ever seen him move, lighting shooting forth from his fingertips to throw Ben into one of the walls behind him. Past snide remarks and depreciatory comments he’d never experienced physical abuse at Snoke’s hands. Before he could push himself back to his feet he was assaulted by another barrage, back arched in pain as he writhed on the floor.  
  
_“Skywalker lives!!!”_ He released the charge and Ben laid on his back, staring up at the ceiling with terror, anger, and confusion in his heart.  
  
“I- I don’t understand!”  
  
“You were not strong enough to kill your uncle! It would appear that I have been deceived into overestimating how strong you truly are!” Snoke punctuated the sentence with yet another shock of blue bolts.  
  
Ben struggled to push himself up, “No! No I, I brought the roof down on top of him, I saw him die!”  
  
“So you didn’t strike him down? You didn’t run him through? You brought down a building on top of him and just assumed he was dead? Unacceptable! If you are to become my apprentice, you will have to earn it. It is clearly time to take a more hands-on approach to your training.”  
  
That was the night his torture began. Kylo thought he was going to vomit as he watched Snoke standing over his younger self, randomly cackling as his fingers moved. That night was hazy in his memory, and he wasn’t entirely sure how Snoke had pulled it off- he thought he’d actually run across the planet, chased by apparitions of Snoke’s making. After three days he’d returned to the Finalizer, covered in streaks of grit and grime from rolling on the floor in agony, fighting the monsters Snoke put in his head.  
  
Over and over and over he killed Luke, he killed his parents, he killed Shara, he killed the students, at one point the boerra from Dynera were one of his enemies. He slashed and slayed and tore and murdered for days in his mind. It was the night he truly took the plunge into the darkness, swallowed by it.

-  
  
_Ben, where the hell are you?_  She listened to the sinking feeling in her stomach and sat on her meditation cushion. She focused on Baela’s teachings. Worry and fear were distractions- though potent, they were weakness; a strong energy, but of no use for channeling the force. She imagined Baela lecturing as she sat, and Kylo could see the shimmering form of her circling Shara.  
  
_Cast the worthless emotions aside. What is there of value that burns in your heart?_ _  
_ _  
_ “I’m angry at how dismissive you were, that you insist on Ben being someone he is not.”  
  
_And why are you angry?_ _  
_ _  
_ “Because you think  I’m wrong, though I know him better than you ever could. That makes me frustrated, because you disrespect my experience and judgment.”  
  
_And what is frustration but a distraction?_ _  
_ _  
_ “Frustration is not a valued emotion in itself, but a stepping stone to an emotion of power. Frustration makes me resent you, and I resent you because you stand in my way, which in turn makes me want to strike you down; which is violence. Violence is fueled by hate. That is where frustration takes me.”  
  
_And what will you do with where frustration has brought you?_ _  
_ _  
_ “I will take my hate to fuel my power and I will use this surge to reach Ben.”  
  
_Why?_ _  
_ _  
_ “To prove you wrong… to get what I want.” She focused on Baela’s voice saying over and over _In your arrogance… he has outgrown you…_ She pushed out in all directions, imagining a sphere around herself. This sphere of energy slowly turned into an oval, then a teardrop shape as it started to home in on the being she was looking for. She went from being at the base of this tear drop shape to having it suddenly inverted on her like a funnel-shape, her awareness falling down to the point.  
  
And then she was there.  
  
Behind her eyelids visions flickered, she saw a small shuttle in front of a towering obsidian structure.  She saw Snoke’s hand and heard his laughter, could feel the heat of the lava, saw Ben’s face pinched in agony as his lips parted to a scream that was punctuated by an image of her standing outside herself with him plunging a red saber through her chest.  
  
She burst back into Baela’s study and the woman looked up with a snarl, but before she could respond she held out her hand and yelled.  
  
“Ben’s on Mustafar and he’s in trouble, I know because I’ve seen it. I meditated like you taught me and I rode the crest of my anger to find him. He’s on a floor in pain. Snoke’s there. He took a shuttle. And… I-I also saw him kill me, which I don’t understand.”  
  
The angry expression melted into wide-eyed wonder. “Is that so… Well... I will contact Snoke to see if you are indeed correct. If you are, as a reward, we will go visit your friend, wherever he may be. If you’re lying, well, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
She meant it.  
  
  
-  
Shara flew down the ramp when they arrived at the Finalizer. It took two whole days from where they were in the Outer Regions, and she hadn’t heard a word from Ben since then. According to Baela, he and Snoke had not returned till the early hours of that morning anyway. Brendol Hux was again with his son and waiting for Baela, but Shara stormed ahead, no mind paid to the formalities of greeting them.  
  
“Miss Teshik, Miss Oshin, I-”  
  
“ _Move!”_ She took her right hand and shoved in between them, almost toppling them both.  
  
_Still a rude bitch I see._ In her fury, the younger Hux's usual mental taunt didn't even register.  
  
Baela thought about stopping her and making her apologize, but let her continue on; she’d waited long enough. “Forgive my apprentice, she’s got a lot on her mind… How have things been since my last visit? It’s been quite some time that I’ve been gone…”  
-  
  
She jammed the call button at his door, and when he didn’t answer she forced the doors open. The emptiness of the silence that greeted her only fed her panic. The light was on in the refresher tucked in the back right corner of the quarters, the door ajar. She could see the sole of one of his boots just visible around the corner. She ran over and clutched the door frame, choking at what she found.  
  
He was laid out in only black leggings and his boots, face smeared black with tears and soot. Even in his unconscious state he looked tormented, brow furrowed, mouth twitching. She fell to her knees, shaking him gently to try and wake him.  
  
“Ben, Ben! Wake up! Stars, please, Ben.” He startled awake, eyes glassy and distant as he tried to push himself upright. Seconds felt like minutes, and when he finally looked up into her face he lunged on top of her, massive hands wrapped around her throat. She grabbed his wrists, struggling for the air to speak.  
  
“What are you doing? Ben it’s _me._ ” Blue eyes plead with him, and he snarled and squeezed tighter before he snapped back to reality, releasing her with a horrified look on his face.  
  
Air rushed back into her lungs and she coughed on the floor as he stumbled to stand, leant in a half-collapsed heap against the wall, panting. She quickly pushed herself back to her feet, staring at him over the tears gathered on her lower eyelids, threatening to fall down flushed cheeks.  
  
“Shara, I’m sorry, I- I didn’t know it was actually you.”  
  
She wanted to ask him what he meant but it could wait. Instead, she did her best to smile for him, managing a little laugh to stave off the tears.  
  
“Oh, Ben, you’re a mess, like you’ve been rolling in a fire pit. Do you want to just go to bed or did you want to shower?”  
  
He straightened, swaying slightly as he pushed off the wall. “I need to get this off me, I need to shower, I-” he wiped his face and rubbed the soot between equally grimy fingers. “I need to get this off.”  
  
“Here,” she took his arm and gently maneuvered him to sit down on the toilet tucked between the sink and the shower. She flipped on the water in the small shower and adjusted the temperature before turning back to him; he was still staring at the dirt on his hands in a daze.  
  
“You’re, ha, you’re all wobbly, you need help.” She sniffled back a sob as she unbuckled his new, knee-high black boots and gently pulled them off and set them aside, peeled his socks away, and then helped him to stand and slip off his pants.  
  
“No, I, I can do this. Go.” He managed them just past his knees before he almost keeled over.  
  
“Ben, don’t be difficult.” He leaned on her as he tried to shake one leg free, and she assisted him in removing both pants and boxers with the force since he was so adamant. She got him under the water and he lost his footing on the smooth acrylic flooring, almost taking her down with him as he wrapped his arms around her to catch himself. Fully clothed, and grateful for her boots’ traction, she stepped into the shower with him and left the sliding door open, letting water droplets soak the refresher floor.  
  
They stayed like that for awhile; his arms draped over her shoulders, the back of his head against her neck as hot water washed the ash away. Even that wasn’t enough though, and when his knees buckled she did her best to grab his waist and lower them both to the floor. He curled up in her lap, his head on her chest.  
  
“I’m so glad it’s really you, I missed you so much.” She could barely hear him over the water pouring down over them.  
  
“Just, just go to sleep Ben, you’re safe, I’m here.”  
  
Kylo had slid down the adjacent side to the same level as her, his back against the wall and his knees up in front of him, arms wrapped around himself and lower lip between his teeth as he watched her body shake with silent sobs, tears hidden by the falling water.  
  
“ _I should never have left you, this is all my fault, we should n-never have come here, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry Ben, please forgive me, I should never have left you, this is my fault, this is all my fault, please forgive me, please.”_  It was a constant stream of apologies whimpered into his hair as she held his unconscious form tight, rocking him slightly, one hand brushing wet tendrils of black from his face.  
  
She summoned the bar of regulation soap from its ledge and did her best to wash what parts of him she could reach, still mumbling her sorrowful apologies between hiccuping sobs. Suddenly she froze mid-scrub, bar of soap still clutched in her hand, staring off as if there were something just outside the shower’s edge. Kylo couldn’t make out her muttering, but he could hear her thoughts.  
  
_Sadness hurts, hurt becomes fear or anger. Fear is weak, so my hurt becomes anger. Why? Because he hurt someone I love. Weakness? No. Love begets power; without love I would have no sadness, without sadness no anger, and without anger I wouldn’t have the power I need to kill Snoke._ _  
_ _  
_ And as quick as it came over her it was gone; she went back to washing the black streaks from his skin and sniffling, with a new line added to her weeping. _  
_ _  
_ _“I’ll kill him. I should never have left you with him, this is all my fault, I'm so sorry Ben, please forgive me…”  
_ _  
_ _  
_ _So that’s when it began._ Kylo had always blamed himself for her madness, but she’d started to fracture much earlier than he’d thought. _  
_ _  
_ _  
_ The sound of echoing footsteps distracted him, each footfall like a hammer to marble... and then with a ragged gasp Kylo was back on the Finalizer. He rose to his feet and spun around in one fluid motion to see the outline of a greatcoat topped with orange hair, glowing a brilliant copper in the light at his back.  
  
Hux sighed through flared nostrils, shaking his head ever so slightly in disapproval. “ _Supreme. Leader._  We have been waiting in the hangar for an hour. Again, you were unresponsive to your messages.” Hux could just make out his form in the starlight, the only illumination in his darkened bedroom.  
  
He’d been lost in meditation the entire night, leaving him totally unrested and completely exhausted.  
  
“As the General of the First Order, it is my responsibility to ensure that you are healthy and _fit_ to lead.” Kylo didn’t miss the emphasis nor the tone in his voice as he continued on. “There is clearly something amiss and I’m not the only one who has noticed. I am very strongly of the opinion that you should stay here and go to the medical bay for scanning and treatment.”  
  
“And you can lead while your Supreme Leader is overmedicated in a hospital bed?” Kylo’s bare feet padded softly on the cold floor as he approached, Hux holding his chin high and refusing to move.  
  
“That’s not what I meant, I simply-” Hux stopped when the light hit Kylo’s face; the purpling under his red-rimmed eyes looked absolutely ghastly. Kylo reached both hands up to physically grab the General by the throat, but the scene from his vision flickered across his mind and instead, he let his hands slide to the General's padded shoulders, squeezing as he spoke.  
  
“I am fine, General Hux. Apologize to my men for me and I will be down soon.” Kylo began to tilt forward before releasing him, a slight wobble as he returned to the darkness of his bedroom. “Unless you wish to watch me undress, I suggest you go now.”  
  
“I assure you I most certainly do _not._ I will see you shortly.” Hux rushed from his quarters, feeling quite sure that Kylo would be the death of his own self.  
  
_And I welcome him to it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter:  
> We go to Dynera, Kylo finds pieces of a puzzle that don't quite piece together yet.  
> The toll of his exhaustion finally comes due and he finds himself quite literally at General Hux's feet. 
> 
>  
> 
> I really hope you've been enjoying it, and thank you so much for reading. I live for comments (and gentle criticisms) Any lore/grammar I got wrong or Star Wars facts you want to share with me please drop in the comments! 
> 
> May the force be with you <3


	8. From Doubt to Dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit short compared to my usual chapters, but Kylo finally confronts Dynera, and his brief moment of relief is upended.

Kylo entertained the idea of using stims or grabbing a cup of caf for energy, but was afraid they’d sharpen the edge of his anxiety even further. After wearily getting dressed, he entered the hangar to see four members of his elite guard standing with Phasma, Hux, & Captain Drasgan; all impatiently awaiting their leader to board the command shuttle. As soon as they'd settled a datapad materialized in Hux’s hand and he began typing away. He informed him that the survey crews had already debarked for the planet and read off other updates that melted into white noise in his ears; Kylo simply nodded where he felt seemed appropriate.  
  
The Finalizer was kept a decent distance from the planet so as not to give away their intended destination, leaving three hours between them and the surface. Hux watched with morbid amusement at the way Kylo’s eyes would close, his form eventually beginning to droop before jumping awake just in time to catch himself from falling forward.  Finally, he did give in, slouching against the wall by where he sat. He was grateful to finally have a dreamless sleep, however brief.  
  
Kylo felt the planet before they slowed their approach, eyes snapping open at the dark pull in the force. He rose and walked to the pilot’s seat, sucking in a sharp breath at the blue and green orb growing in the viewscreen.  
  
“Move. We’re not following the surveyors.” His voice was soft and low, but the pilot leapt out of the way at the command as if it were a shout.  The pilot looked at Hux apologetically and shrugged as the General rolled his eyes and sighed.  
  
“Sup- _reme Lea-_ der. Do you think it _wise_ to- hck!” He saw a gloved hand reach just past the profile of the chair, clawed out to silence him before returning to the controls. The rest of the descent was made without a sound, an unbearable tension straining the air. With a grace Hux found surprising, he landed the ship on the crumbling marble pad beside the temple- the same one Baela used when she whisked them away so many years ago.  
  
_It’s time to face this place. It’s empty now. It’s nothing. You’ll prove it means nothing to you._  
  
“We’ll start here, then join the surveyors in the mountains further North. Come.”  
  
He rose and squared his shoulders, punching the ramp controls before marching to the back of the shuttle. He stopped abruptly at the beginning of the ramp like he’d hit a wall. The achingly familiar scents on the Dynera drifted into the ship, and that brief burst of bravado he’d managed to work up dissolved into the breeze. Hux, as detestable as he was, was at least something human to hold on to, and at that moment Kylo wanted above all to be reminded that he wasn’t alone.  
  
Hux jumped under his touch as Kylo grabbed onto his shoulder, squeezing and leaning onto him ever so slightly. The General’s face twitched in a mixture of confusion and irritation.  
  
“S-supreme Leader?”  
  
“ _Walk with me,_ ” he whispered. Kylo had his eyes trained on the ground as he carefully stepped down the ramp, drawing a shuddering breath before raising his eyes to look at the haunting scenery around them.  
  
They stayed at the edge of the ramp for some time, and the General’s internal monologue was panicking. He wondered if Kylo was going to punish him planetside for his murderous intentions, waiting for him to use the steel grip on his shoulder to shove him to his knees and execute him on the spot. Perhaps there was some dark power here that would make him just as powerful as Snoke, ready to electrocute him under blue bolts of agony. Hux swallowed nervously, tongue darting out over his lower lip before slowly moving to look up at Kylo.  
  
His fears vanished. Kylo looked like a child whose pet loth-cat had just been snatched up by a vornskär. His eyebrows were pinched together, gaze staring off like something was hovering just in front of him. His lips moved as if he were going to speak, but instead he blinked rapidly, and Hux realized he was on the verge of tears. It was entirely too human a thing to see on the phantom of a man, (it reminded him of the muffin incident), and he quickly looked away.  
  
“Ahem. So, ah, no one’s been here for years, you said?” He motioned to the edge of the dilapidated platform and arched an orange eyebrow at the pile of liquor bottles and assorted garbage that had been tossed onto the twiggy stumps of  bushes below.  
  
Kylo released him quickly and coughed, clearing his throat, before summoning one of the bottles to his hand.  He looked at the base of it, then ran his finger across an indentation around the neck.  
  
“No stamps. Trade collars removed, can’t trace where it came from. Smugglers probably stopped here to hide out; strange though, considering how superstitious they are. Stopping on an unlucky planet, let alone a cursed one would be considered a jinx on their trade. Some smugglers wouldn’t even buy a shipment that had so much as touched down here, they’d be worried it would… ” He mumbled the last bit of the sentence, realizing  he was suddenly talking too much, “... it’d bring bad luck…”  
  
He tossed the bottle down with the rest, walking in long strides to the stairs that led down to the rubble that was once a temple so long ago.  
  
It wasn’t just the memories that haunted him as he walked, he could feel the sickness that churned in the force of the planet. The slaughter that had taken place that night seemed to have put a wound in the force. Had he been paying more attention on their descent he would have seen the gray swath across an otherwise green continent, the ancient temple in the center of the dying.  
  
Nature had re-claimed much of what was left behind; thick gnarled vines swallowed the padawan huts, their roots weaving into crevices and splitting stone from the inside out. The burned out remains of the temple were covered in much of the same with saplings trying to sprout  up from the char left behind. They couldn’t quite make it past adolescence, though, leaving the eerie appearance of spikes rising up from the ruins.  
  
He hoped that the force herded him to the planet because there was some well of dark energy here for him to draw on. There was nothing concrete to take note of, though. The strength of both light and dark pushing against each other created a buzzing noise like static just at the edge of his awareness, more chaos than anything. He still didn’t understand what it was he was supposed to _do_ here.  
  
Maybe this would give him closure, turning painful memories to an annoyance that could be ignored, reducing his past to a necessary stepping stone instead of a constant haunting. Maybe if he could see it, he’d prove to himself that any lingering emotions should be just as dead as this place… and just as dead as _her_... that the nightmares would stop.  He marched past the crumbling huts, through the remnants of the gate, and straight to the river. Hux stumbled to keep up with the frantic pace, almost running into Kylo as he stopped suddenly at the edge of the treeline, his hand held out slightly at his side.  
  
“You. Stay here.”  
  
It was the same, but so different.  
  
The willow they used to hide beneath had died; its barren, whip-like branches resembling the hair of a nightmarish hag as they clawed at the river’s surface. Flooding had happened sometime recently, and the once colorful stones were awash in a thin coating of silt, painting the bank in a depressing matte gray. He could just make out the tiny vertebra of little fish scattered amongst the rocks in the shallows, much more visible now that the riverweed had died off. The chirp of birds and insects were also noticeably absent, which only served to make his thoughts even louder.  
  
It was just him, dead things, and the river.  
  
Hux crossed his arms.  
He pulled his datapad out for a second then returned it to his coat pocket.  
After a few minutes he huffed and crossed his arms again.  
He looked over to Kylo’s guards, who were standing stoically, then to Phasma, then back to them…  
and huffed again.  
  
Twenty minutes had passed when he clenched his hands into fists at his side. “Oh for kriffsake, I’ve had just about enough of this.”  
  
He stalked to the edge of the gully and looked down to the river below. Their fierce Supreme Leader was kneeling and searching for… for a rock? Hux could just hear the light echo of the splashes as they skipped across the water.  
  
It was like meditation for Kylo, his mind trying to decipher what it was the force wanted with him on this planet. Rather than answers he was just taunted with more memories.  
  
Swimming in the summer  
  
Splish-splash-splish  
  
Sliding across ice in the winter  
  
Splish-splash-splish  
  
Regardless of the season, it was only ever the pair of them, and it was always perfect.  
  
Splish-splash-splish  
  
Hux shook his head, _This is absolutely one of the most absurd things I’ve ever witnessed. Perhaps I’m the one going mad._  
  
“Supreme Leader, I… ah...do you… is everything _alright_?” His voice jumped half an octave at the end of his question; from confusion rather than any type of concern.  
  
Kylo ignored him, but the next rock didn’t skip at all, instead making a defeated “sploosh” as it sunk down beneath the murky waters. He stared at the disturbance in the surface where it had fallen, mesmerized.  
  
He remembered the beast inside them, then; the way they cut their way through the galaxy, her two sabers become an extension of his will. How even as disguised and destroyed as they all were she’d still place a hand on his back when he needed reassurance the most, and the way her garbled voice screamed through the melting vocoder on her mask.  
  
He spun around to face the outcropping of rock where they spent so much time and reached out, focusing on all the churning emotions to break it from the gully. A falling boulder knocked the dead willow from its perch, burying it  under a small landslide as rocks and debris followed. He didn’t stop pulling until it was leveled, the event blocking most of the river’s flow. He stood, hands still clawed, hunched over and panting, as he took a moment to recover. Without looking back he returned up the bank, barking an order to Hux as he stormed past.  
  
“There’s your ore. Mine the planet.”  
  
“We still need the results from the surveying crews to determine if there’s even a relevant enough amount of-” Kylo whirled around and grabbed him by the jaw, his massive, black-gloved hand a sharp contrast to the pale skin beneath it.  
  
Despite the fury smoldering in his eyes, his voice was a velveteen snarl through clenched teeth, “I told you to mine the fucking planet, Hux.”   
  
He moved till he was inches away from the other man’s face, “ Mine. It.”  Hux flinched; as harshly as he accentuated the ‘t’ he almost expected spit to fly in his face. Kylo released him roughly and continued on back down the path, one guard jamming the muzzle of a blaster in the stunned General’s back to make him follow.  
  
Kylo marched through the woods, head held high, wearing his pain like a mantle rather than hiding it away. The act of destruction beside the river cemented his resolve in conquering his past. His lips were pressed in a straight line as he stomped through the overgrowth on the path, eyes focused on the remains of the temple just visible through the trees.  
  
_I’ll destroy all of it. Just as it will cease to exist, so will its grip on me. It’s symbolic. The darkness knew what I needed; that was the point of remembering. Just another tool to craft my destiny._  
  
When the small group reached the top of the stairs Kylo waved them on to the ship. He took a moment to stand on the platform where Luke had made him ‘dance with the droids’, pausing to overlook what used to be the Jedi Academy. He pictured the forest leveled and replaced with towering excavators, the huts instead piles of ore being sorted by refinery droids, and the temple at his back replaced with a large overseer’s station, or perhaps the glowing pits of smelters… and it made his heart sing.  
  
  
Something at his back sang with him.   
  
  
He spun on heel, eyes searching the rubble of the temple. There was a hum across the force, a low pitch that he could feel as much as hear. Hux had turned back to address the mining issue with him in private, and reflexively flinched when he reached out, expecting another force choke. His focus was on the rubble, though, and he turned to see what it was Kylo was staring at so intently.  There was a cracking noise, then a rustle, followed by the sound of falling rocks. Something flew inches past the General’s face to land in Kylo’s outstretched hand.  
  
A large, black kyber crystal had shot out of the rubble, somehow both sparkling and so dark that it seemed to punch a hole in reality itself.  
  
  
The same crystal he saw fall in the fire.  
  
  
“They’re real,” he said to Hux, as if he knew what he was referring to. “ They’re visions, not memories- not dreams, not, not-” Suddenly his hand seemed so far away and small, like he was looking through a telescope instead of his eyes. He could feel the twist of vertigo as he fell forward, unable to stop his collapse;  and then everything went black. 

  
His body, run threadbare and ragged between physical and mental fatigue, finally gave out.  
  
A spark lit in the general’s eyes at the black form prostrated before him.  As his mind raced through all the possibilities, the stomp of Phasma’s boots behind him broke him from the reverie. As if she could read his mind, she whispered just loud enough for her vocoder to pick up.  
  
“Not like this, sir.”  
  
He was about to disagree when Kylo’s guard came rushing down the ramp, some hidden signal alerting them that something was wrong.  
  
“You’re right, Phasma,” he sighed, “You’re always right.” He watched with disappointment as they retrieved their fallen leader, and hailed the Finalizer’s medbay on his comm.  
  
  
  
  
  
If he was conscious, he would have felt Luke's force ghost watching them as they dragged him up the ramp and into the waiting ship.   
  
"Yet again, Ben, the force shows you something... and somehow you always get it wrong."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! I'm not great at writing scenery, and tried really hard to capture the strange desolation in the air of the planet. 
> 
> Comments are welcome, and kind criticisms are too. If I've gotten any Star Wars lore wrong plz let me know!
> 
> Next chapter we get some Luke force ghost, and Kylo finally realizes why he's suddenly had all these flashbacks.


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